


What To Get The Couple Who Has Everything

by jesshelga



Series: I’m Finding It Hard To Believe (We’re In Derry) [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, Needful Things - Stephen King
Genre: But Also Fighting a Demon, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak's It's Complicated Relationship With Myra, M/M, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier's Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27747514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesshelga/pseuds/jesshelga
Summary: While Richie and Eddie continue to cohabitate and work things out, Derry gets a new (demonic) business owner. (Needful) Things progress from there.aka A Needful Things-It movieverse fusion/Richie and Eddie narrowly miss getting their own HGTV reno show
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: I’m Finding It Hard To Believe (We’re In Derry) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2030017
Comments: 20
Kudos: 20





	1. Grand Opening Celebration

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to anxietygrrl and ndnickerson for encouragement/beta. This was originally conceived as a continuation of my original fix-it fic, but can likely be read as a stand-alone.
> 
> CW: Richie's continued struggles with internalized homophobia; infidelity; overt linking of the demon world to Trump and his followers

_Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores_

_Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more_

—Bruce Springsteen, “My Hometown”

YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

—Stephen King, _Needful Things_ prologue

They were still at the riverfront cottage when Richie first broached the idea.

The two of them were in bed—Richie sitting up against the headboard, scrolling through Twitter; Eddie prone and slowly drifting off to sleep—when Richie said, “Hey, are you still awake?”

“It depends,” Eddie murmured, turning his body slightly, eyes closed, the tip of his nose brushing Richie’s hip.

Setting his phone down on the nightstand as a sort of punctuation, Richie responded, “I have an idea.”

Eddie responded by rolling flat on his back, then throwing his arm over his eyes in what Richie believed was meant to be a dramatic display of exhaustion. “Dude, I know you’re going to make fun of me, but I’m _really_ tired. Can’t we fuck around in the morning?”

Richie threw his head back and laughed. “Pardon me, Mr. Kaspbrak, ‘fuck around’? I’ll have you know the correct term is ‘make love’...”

“Ugh, Jesus, even as a joke that’s gross…”

“...and as ego-gratifying and dick-gratifying as it is to hear I’ve managed to drain your semen tanks to E, I’m not talking about that kind of an idea.”

Dropping his arm away from his face and squinting up through the dim lamplight, Eddie sighed one of his less-annoyed sighs and said, “Okay then, what?”

Tamping down the urge to jam his hands under the covers and grope Eddie in reply, Richie said, “I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do next. I don’t...really feel like going back onstage anytime soon, and I don’t really have any marketable skills outside of being a professional jackass. I was trying to think of what I could do while I figured shit out. I have this house in LA I bought when I was first starting out. I don’t really like it, or want it, and it has some, y’know, equity or whatever...” Richie trailed off in the hopes Eddie would read his mind or infer his business plan based on some kind of magical combination of book learning, smarts, and whatever supernatural forces brought him back to the land of the living.

A moment or two of silence passed between them, and then, pulling himself up to face Richie, Eddie responded evenly, “If this is some long lead up to a punchline where you make fun of my job, I want you to know I’m not above punching you right in the nutsack.”

Richie reached over and framed Eddie’s angular face between his hands, pleased as always that it seemed designed to fit exactly into his palms. “I want you to know that every time you threaten me with physical violence, I fall for you all over again. I recognize how problematic that is, but I probably won’t ever get therapy for it.”

“Would you get on with it already? I told you: I’m tired.” Eddie’s expression was at war with itself, which was one of Richie’s absolute favorite Eddie settings: oscillating between general fatigue, bone-deep annoyance, and—if he knew where to look, as Richie now did—turned on. 

Richie removed his scaffolding from the Kaspbrak cheekbones and jaw and fidgeted between folding his arms over his chest and knotting his hands together in his lap. “You know… the Capitol is for lease.”

“The old theater and arcade? Didn’t you tell me it was trashed?”

“I mean, in a way, that makes it a perfect Trashmouth project, don’t you think? Fix it up? I know this will come as a surprise to you, but I’ve spent some time in our nation’s finest barcades, and I think one would be a nice addition to Derry’s main street.”

Sitting up a little straighter, clearly fueling himself with all the coursework from his MBA program in the early aughts, Eddie began his monologue: “Oh, my God, Rich, small businesses fail _every year_ , and _especially_ small businesses run by people who have no experience running a small business. You’re going to end up throwing hundreds of thousands—fuck, probably a _million_ dollars—at a rat-infested shithole in our hometown, which hasn’t had a viable economy in fuck knows _how_ long... Like, _literally_ , you and I don’t know, because we haven’t been back here in decades and don’t know shit about shit about this place other than a fucking fear-sucking alien landed here a million years ago, which I’m sure the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t advertise on its website! Weren’t you the one who told me over _three weeks_ ago that we should get the fuck out of here? And now you want to throw your hard-earned shitty joke money into a money pit on Main Street?”

Slipping his hand under the covers and squeezing Eddie’s leg just above his knee, Richie smiled. “Well, not just my money. I was thinking of asking Bill to be an investor.”

Eddie flapped his hands up and down and made several exasperated noises. Richie half expected him to achieve flight. _Check it out, Stanny: the Doe-Eyed Crested Kaspbrak._

“I don’t...expect you to hang around, you know. I know you have a real job and property in New York and shit. And, uh, a divorce?” The question mark was awkwardly tacked on; Richie did not want his read of the tea leaves to be driven by optimism. Nearly four days prior, Eddie announced, upon walking into the kitchen from one of his semi-regular morning deck chats with his wife, that he had asked Myra for a trial separation. Richie still struggled to directly address both Eddie’s marital future and whatever _their_ future was without verbally stumbling over it.

Eddie’s expression softened. His eyes adjusted from nearly-bugged-out frustration to gentle affection, at least what passed for such a thing when Eddie was already six minutes past his usual bedtime. “So I’m just going to bail on you? Is that it? Wow. Flattering portrait you paint of me, asshole.”

Richie paused, then sulked, “Well, I don’t know! You tell me! I mean, you don’t need me lounging around whatever swinging soon-to-be bachelor pad you’ll end up in now that Mrs. Kaspbrak has probably chucked all your shit into the street...”

“Hey…”

“I mean, if you had a pool house, _maybe_. Then I could be your cabana boy. But… New York means I should be doing shows and writing and hustling, and I just… I don’t...”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, man.” Eddie’s neutral-sounding statement was punctuated by a squeeze of Richie’s forearm, followed by a sort of petting motion where he ran his fingers slowly back and forth over Richie’s arm hair. The effect was soothing, so much so that a joke about wanting to _do_ _Eddie_ died in his throat.

Richie placed his other hand, the one not attached to the arm Eddie was petting, along the side of Eddie’s neck, curled his fingers so he could feel where Eddie’s hairline had been gradually growing more and more unruly.

_(“I know Pennywise is dead and everything, but… I feel like going to a barber here is just asking for something weird and bad to happen” he’d said one morning, sullenly rubbing at the back of his neck. Richie’s response had been to bury his face in it and murmur, “Eddie Spaghetti and his fusilli… mangia!”)_

Eddie stared at Richie silently, which resulted in Richie blurting “Dude, _what_?” The frustrated edge was buffered by a chuckle, as he recalled expecting Eddie to read his mind.

With a pointed gavotte of his eyebrows, Eddie responded, “Well? I’m _awake_ now.”

Folding his arms across his chest tightly, Richie smirked. “Let me run that through the Kaspbrak Rosetta Stone: does that mean you wish to engage in coitus?”

Eddie gave him a look that was 30% glare and 70% unimpressed, dead-eyed stare in reply.

Unable to resist any longer, Richie threw back the duvet, stood, journeyed to the foot of the bed and, with the advantage of the element of surprise and a high degree of adrenaline and horniness, grabbed Eddie by the ankles and yanked so that he violently and inelegantly slid out of his sitting position, then vaulted across him to try and pin Eddie’s arms above his head.

Naturally, Eddie put up a fight, kicking and thrashing and pretty much doing all he could to make it seem like this wasn’t part of their foreplay now. “Stop _manhandling_ me, you fucking _oaf_.”

“Baby, that’s all I can do. I’m a man. A man with hands.”

“You _know_ what I…” The remainder of Eddie’s annoyed protest ended in a stuttered breath.

Richie leaned down and whispered “How’s that for manhandling?” against the corner of Eddie’s mouth. Eddie’s reply was a breathless, stifled groan. Eddie tugged his arms free of Richie’s now-slackened grip and squirmed himself closer to bury his face in Richie’s neck. Clearly smothering laughter, he grumbled, “You’re such a fucking idiot,” before pressing his lips behind Richie’s ear.

WIthout skipping a beat, Richie, in a flawless Peter Falk, replied, “He was amazed to discover when he was saying ‘You’re such a fucking idiot,’ what he meant was, ‘I love you.’”

Eddie’s eye contact was suddenly deliberate and measured. “ _No_. No Buttercup. _Especially_ no Princess. ‘Baby’ is fine, all the old junk like Eds and Spaghetti I’ve _never_ been able to stop, because you’re an obstinate goddamn pain, but don’t even _think_ about it. I’m not a princess.”

“Not with that fucking attitude you’re not,” Peter Falk said while deliberately moving his palm against his non-princess. “But _speaking_ of things of Unusual Size…”

So the topic of the Capitol didn’t get resolved that evening.

* * *

Over breakfast the next morning, however, Eddie returned to the topic, far sooner than Richie had anticipated. Eddie poured Richie’s Golden Grahams for him and slid them across the island, pushed the half-gallon of milk forward next, then said, “Were you joking when you said you were going to ask Bill?”

Rubbing at his hair to try to get his synapses firing in the right order, Richie muttered, “Why are you so _capable_ in the morning? It’s disgusting.”

“I got laid last night,” Eddie replied, smiling smugly over the rim of his mug. “That helps.”

“I don’t like this… this role reversal thing you’re going for. It’s not cool and I totally didn’t get an electric jolt to the dick when you said the word ‘laid.’ Yes, I was serious about Bill. He’s the perfect investor: he’s got shitloads of money, he won’t want to be directly involved in the project at all, and he still owes me for punching me in the face thirty years ago.”

“I never learned how compound interest accrues for getting socked in the big, dumb, never-shuts-up mouth. Why aren’t you asking Ben and Bev?”

“I don’t know. Seems like between her contentious public divorce and their general lovebird nesting they wouldn’t…” Richie trailed off after a look at Eddie’s smirk, paired with his pink-tipped ears. “Oh. Ha ha ha. Well... _yours_ isn’t public and contentious.”

“Yet.” Eddie’s tone was steady and knowing.

“Yet.” Richie parroted back, thinking of his own potential role in something contentious and public. It made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“I can’t… I shouldn’t be an investor, you know. Not right now. That would make my future contentious divorce a real shitshow from the word ‘jump.’ But I could...help. You’re going to need help.” Eddie took a sip of tea. “You’re _really_ gonna need help.”

“Yeah, yeah, I attended your seminar last night. Small businesses fail. Derry sucks. Admit it: you’re a _little_ excited to yell at a contractor.”

Richie watched Eddie tamp down a smile. “I’m more excited to have another reason to yell at _you_. Selling property in LA so you can relive your youth… you’re unreal. Real estate is a sound investment, _especially_...”

Richie slammed his forehead down on his folded arms, rattling his bowl of Golden Grahams.

“I’ve got a great name for your LLC: Petulant Dickhead Enterprises.”

Speaking directly into the counter, Richie replied, “What’s an LLC?”

“Christ.”

“What’s _petulant_ mean?”

After several beats of silence, Richie peeked up from his heads-down-seven-up position. 

Eddie had left the kitchen.

* * *

Richie called his business manager, Kristen, who was alarmingly simpatico with Eddie. Richie began to deeply regret not surrounding himself with more yes-people in his career and personal life.

“I’ll contact our realtor to put your house on the market, if that’s what you really want, but… Richie, I’m a business manager for _entertainers._ Not...whatever this is. So not to sound like I’m not a friend, too, but… after I get my cut on this, I’m out of whatever you’re doing next.”

After that, the call to Bill seemed like it would be easier: they’d forged blood bonds both figurative and literal _and_ they were both rich entertainment types used to other rich entertainment types being whimsical idiots.

But Bill derailed the conversation quickly. “Are you still in Derry? Uh, with Eddie?”

Richie recognized the cant of Bill’s tone immediately. Years of code-switching between Cruising for Dudes and Presenting as Straight had made his ears keen for _that_ tone. And it was one thing to tell Bev, to talk to Bev about it—Bev wasn’t a straight guy, and Bev was bedding down with a fellow Loser’s Club member who had pined for her in their misspent and deeply haunted youth, so Richie knew she had a general soft spot for that particular brand of stupid fixation—but to talk to Big Bill Denbrough about this directly was another, much more uncomfortable matter.

Despite gut-roiling anxiety, Richie called an audible. “I’m gay. And related to that headline: yes, I’m still here in Derry; yes, I’m still here with Eddie; and yes, I’m doing gay stuff with Eddie. To Eddie. On Eddie. Really, any of the prepositions. And, you know, vicey-versey. I’m gay. I don’t know if Eddie’s gay. You’ll have to ask him. We haven’t really talked about that while we’re doing gay stuff to each other.” Richie nearly bit his tongue in half to keep from rambling on and on, afraid the next words out of his mouth would eventually lead to “Do you want to know how Eddie sounds when he’s getting his dick sucked?” because Bev had told him she didn’t want to know, thanks anyway. And Richie really wanted at least one other Loser’s Club member to know. Eddie didn’t appreciate the imitation he was carefully honing, despite it being complimentary.

True to his nature, Bill took the deluge in with a sort of thoughtful patience. “Well… thanks for telling me. I’m here for you.”

“Thank you, PFLAG Pamphlet. I appreciate that. Don’t suppose you feel comfortable admitting you kinda knew, at least about me, and that’s why you kept trying to discourage me from hanging around while his wife was here.”

“You’re very perceptive, Rich,” Bill responded drily. “If it makes you feel any better, I was also coming from a place of… understanding. You know, what it’s like to have feelings for someone when you’re a kid and then see them again and still… you know…”

“Ah, yes, your giant Bev boner. I see. Like, literally, I saw it once. _Big Bill and His Big Bev Boner_ would be a pretty good YA title. You can have that for free.” Then, recognizing a perfect segue when he made one, Richie ignored Bill’s exasperated sigh on the other end of the phone and continued, “Well, maybe not _free_ …”

* * *

_He’d been this way once before. Not to this town—this_ exact _town—but “in the neighborhood,” as they say._

 _Things had gone well… at first. The business model is time-worn, time-tested. People want what the shop offers. What_ he _offers._

_But as sometimes happens, the scales tip out of favor. There’s always another town or hamlet. Always an empty storefront. Always want. And most importantly: always discord, always distrust._

_There’s a recent vacancy, he notes, both in terms of available real estate and in terms of_

(power)

_occupancy. He would have been willing to share, but Those Types weren’t known to be interested in sharing. So it was just as well It was gone._

_More for him._

_He detected notes of Something Else, but they were faint—faint and unclear. And since Derry still had stores of anger and confusion and violence radiating from its earth and its sky… it was worth taking the chance._

_It’d be too on the nose, he supposed, to name the shop_ **Making Greatness**. He’d ruminate as he began to build his foundation.

* * *

Eddie was at the kitchen table of the riverside cottage. But the kitchen was also the kitchen of his childhood home. He turned his head, and behind him was the living room of his and Myra’s Tudor-style home in Queens Village. Everything wavered a bit, like a heat mirage, then steadied.

The air smelled like the hospital room where Sonia had died, so when Eddie turned his head back to face the kitchen again, he wasn’t surprised to see his mother sitting in the chair opposite him.

“Eddie, where have you been?” Sonia’s tone was hysterical but her face and hands were very still. The memory of the mortician’s artistry, framed by the open casket, surged through him, electrical and nauseating.

He felt confused and sick. Sick like he used to feel—chest tight, pulse rapid, mind clouded with fury and defensiveness. “What do you mean? I’ve been _here_. Where’s Richie?”

Sonia’s expression flickered. “Who?”

The kitchen was the riverside cottage’s once again. Myra took a seat. “Who is Richie?”

“Stop… this isn’t…” _This isn’t real,_ he thought. But enough of it was real… perhaps deeming it _unreal_ wasn't honest. He looked away from his wife, back to his mother. “You know Richie, Ma.”

His mother’s face shifted again, a change in her mask-like features gone in a microsecond. “I worry about you, Eddie. I’d prefer if you’d stay here with me.” Her hand landed heavily on his wrist, and her skin was papery and fragile. 

She was dead. She was dead now like she was dead then.

Myra took hold of his other wrist. She was alive, of course. But her touch made him feel sicker, more anxious. The smell of death became oppressive; he felt bile rising in his throat. “If you don’t want to stay with her, you could always come home, Eddie.”

He looked to Myra. Her face was blurry, half-remembered. He hated himself for it. “No.”

Sonia spoke again, though her lips weren’t moving. “Eddie Bear, if you don’t leave Derry, then the only other choice is here with me. Don’t you want your mother to be happy? And wouldn’t you rather be dead, really? When you _really_ think about it?”

Eddie pulled, and the skin slid off Sonia’s palm and lay in a tidy pile on the table. Hysteria tightened his throat, and he pushed his feet into the floor to stand, to run, but he couldn’t move his legs.

He looked to where the bedroom should be, but there was only inky darkness like there had been in the cistern. Richie...

And he woke with that same tight feeling in his throat, a scream lodged sideways like a chicken bone. Flailing his arm, he finally collided with one of Richie’s solid thighs.

Richie looked down at him from his phone. The bedroom was dark, and the digital alarm clock told Eddie it was nearly 3 AM.

Setting his phone on the side table, switching on the lamp, and running a hand over Eddie’s hair, Richie gently said, “You were dreaming.”

Eddie nodded. The fear remained fixed, like it had replaced his Adam’s apple and was bobbing around blocking words. He wound his fingers into the hem of Richie’s shirt and tugged. “Could you…”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Richie wriggled himself so he was lying down; moving with immediacy, as though to prove he could move at all, Eddie threw an arm across the expanse of Richie’s chest and pressed his face into Richie’s stupid Snoopy as Joe Cool shirt to erase the sense memory of corpse stench. He inhaled until everything was sandalwood and sweat and the scent-free laundry detergent that, of course, still smelled like something. “You wanna tell me about it?” Richie murmured, scratching over Eddie’s scalp from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck.

Eddie inhaled again, focused on Richie’s fingernails sending little shocks of pleasure through his scalp, and felt the panic subside. “I was out in the kitchen with my mom and… and it was like she was both alive and dead. And when I asked where you were, she pretended like she didn’t know who you were.”

“That sounds about right.” It was the mildest reaction Eddie knew he could hope for, Richie’s effort to be considerate. 

Tightening his arm against Richie, rubbing his face back and forth a bit, Eddie grumbled in the back of his throat. “She knew I had died. She was asking me to go with her. Back to...being dead.”

“Jesus.” The scalp massage stopped. “Eds…”

“It was… I haven’t had a nightmare like that since…”

“Well, you’re not dead. And I’m here. I remember you. I know you.”

Pulling away from Richie’s shoulder for a moment, Eddie looked up. Richie’s expression was serious and earnest for only a moment before one corner of his mouth lifted in a badly disguised smirk. “Like, I _know_ you. _Intimately_.”

“All right.” Eddie pressed his face back into Richie’s shoulder.

“I’ve seen your dick, like, a _bunch_ of times.”

“All _right,_ I said. Idiot. Maybe I should reconsider dying.” 

Richie responded by wrapping both arms around Eddie and cinching like a boa constrictor. “Don’t joke about that, please.” His voice was low, his tone almost fragile.

Eddie covered the sudden hitch in his breathing by huffing, “Oh, is that a thing we can ask each other now? Great, because I have…”

“No. Just me. And just that one thing.”

They rested in silence for a while. Richie resumed massaging Eddie’s scalp; Eddie took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Why are you wide awake at three in the morning? Was I snoring?”

Richie shrugged as much as he could with one arm wrapped around Eddie, still stroking his hair. “No, it wasn’t you. I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep, I guess. I tried after you conked out, but after a few hours, I gave up. Was thinking about Fleetwood Mac and that turned into an hour of reading Wikipedia entries about band breakups.”

Eddie thought again about the shimmer he’d seen, the way the dream was frightening and shameful, but also how the fear and shame wasn’t the point. How his mother had casually dropped in the suggestion to leave Derry.

Well, not a suggestion. More of an either/or sort of statement.

“Do you think it’s possible Pennywise is still around?”

Richie stilled for a moment, then pulled back to meet Eddie’s gaze. “No. No way.”

Eddie felt himself nod, more for Richie than in any sort of actual agreement. “Okay.”

Repeating “No” a little less emphatically and leaning back, Richie placed a hand flat against Eddie’s chest, the spot where the scar tissue was the most prominent. “Why?”

“It’s weird, I guess. Me having a nightmare, you not sleeping. It’s like there’s…”

“A disturbance in The Force?” Richie flexed his fingers in time with Eddie’s heartbeat.

“Yeah, you nerd. Sorta like that.”

“Well, don’t worry, young Padawan. We won. The Death Star exploded. Darth is dead, baby.”

Eddie frowned. “Don’t combine _Star Wars_ and _Pulp Fiction_.” He stopped Richie’s hand from its synchronized pulsing. “I didn’t listen to Bev… you know, at the beginning of everything. She tried to tell us about the Deadlights and dreams and all that, and I dismissed her.”

Light bounced off Richie’s glasses, obscuring his eyes, but Eddie could see the pinch in his mouth—Eddie had learned that expression was Richie smothering frustration. “You were scared, and everything was fucking weird.”

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself or anything. I’m just saying I was wrong.” Eddie put his hand over Richie’s and squeezed. “And I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Promise me if things aren’t going well or it feels like the project is too much, you’ll tell me, and we’ll go. And I’ll promise to do the same.”

Richie pressed a thumb into Eddie’s neck, stroking it back and forth over one of Eddie’s more prominent tendons. “Like an anti-safe word. Sexy.”

“Sure, if that means you’ll promise and do it, dumbass.” All the petting and soothing was having its intended effect, and Eddie found that his eyelids were growing heavy. He clenched the portion of Richie’s shirt with Joe Cool’s sunglasses into his fist to ground himself. “Bill would understand. Bill would understand more than anyone if we fucked off out of Derry.”

“Probably tempting fate to make the word anti-safe word ‘Pennywise,’ huh?”

“Rich.”

“Fine, how about ‘Hadouken’?”

“Sure,” Eddie murmured. “Just… promise. Promise we’ll go.”

“I promise.”

And as Eddie drifted back to sleep, Richie switched off the lamp and sighed.

* * *

The LLC didn’t end up Petulant Dickhead Enterprises. And it didn’t end up as R + E Enterprises, either, though Richie lobbied hard and, at one point, with a degree of earnest soppiness that broke Eddie’s usually stern front on all matters related to the endeavor (from the depths of a tight embrace, buried mostly in Richie’s chest, he’d replied, “I get it. You like me. I like you too, man. Stop fucking _crushing_ me.”). They settled on RW Tozier Enterprises, with the name of the arcade/bar to be determined at a later date; Richie was “marinating on” or workshopping names on an ongoing basis, many of them specifically designed to annoy Eddie.

They were strolling down the main drag on their way to a scheduled tour of the Capitol with a real estate agent (who, Richie suspected, drew the short straw at the Christmas party or some similar ill-fated distribution of a hopeless task) and was struggling, as he frequently did, with an internal debate that could have been given the headline _You’re Walking So Close To Him, It’s Basically The Same As Holding His Hand vs Just Hold His Hand, You Fucking Coward_ when he was shaken from his continuing moderate case of internalized homophobia by Eddie saying, “What the _fuck_?”

They stopped in front of the store’s window, draped in a GRAND OPENING! Banner. The gold lettering announced its name: PECULIAR TREASURES.

The window display featured a pristine Street Fighter arcade cabinet and, hunched over the controls, a boy-sized mannequin wearing a Thundercats tee shirt and a 1980s-era fanny pack.

And Richie, furious both for having assumed Eddie was having regular trauma-based nightmares and that Derry wasn’t done fucking with them yet, drew in a breath, snarled, “Oh, fuck this,” and threw the store’s door open.

The bell above the door tinkled merrily. Eddie, in a dismayed strangled whisper, said, “No, Rich… no.”

At the gleaming glass display case stood a tall man, somewhere between the age of sixty and eighty. If Richie were to play casting agent, he’d say the man shared a lot of similarities with Stellan Skarsgard. Perhaps 20 years ago, he would’ve been played by Max von Sydow. The only difference was that this man’s eyes weren’t Scandinavian blue, but distinctly, deeply brown.

Eddie Kaspbrak brown.

It pulled him up short for a moment. The tall man seemed pleased to see that… or to see the two of them, though as he looked from Richie to Eddie, he paused and studied Eddie. His face didn’t seem acquainted with confusion, but something like it flitted over him. “Good morning to you, fine fellows. Welcome, welcome. Russell Barlow. What a pleasure to meet the two of you. You have the distinction of being my first two customers.” Barlow extended his hand and, despite his best judgment, Richie took it and shook it.

“Richie Tozier.” _Based on the fucking display window, I bet you knew that,_ he thought. He turned, looked at Eddie, who was absentmindedly scratching at his chest and staring into Barlow’s face with an oddly blank expression. “This is Eddie. Eddie, say hi to the nice people.”

Picking all the times in his life to play into a bit, Eddie murmured, “Hi, nice people.”

“Well, the two of you seem like a whole lot of fun. So tell me, Richard… what brings you downtown today?”

Warring internally between the truth and some kind of vague misdirect, Richie chose truth. “We’re taking a look at the Capitol. I’m thinking about renovating it. Eddie’s along for the ride as my business manager.”

Barlow smiled. “Always good to have guidance. Never had a business partner myself, but I can see the appeal.” The older man punctuated this statement by looking from Richie to Eddie, then giving Eddie a cursory once-over.

Despite himself, Richie felt a flush creep up his collar.

“How much for that?” 

Eddie’s question startled both Richie _and_ Barlow. Richie followed Eddie’s pointer finger to a delicate ladies’ style watch in the case. Barlow’s expression faltered again, that not-quite-confusion dancing between his eyebrows. Richie watched and waited, certain Barlow would crack open like an egg and reveal whatever bizarre horror he truly was.

After a quiet five seconds had passed, Barlow smiled, showing his teeth, and said, “Oh, I’m afraid that’s being held for someone. Sold it via an auction site this morning.”

Eddie lifted his shoulders a bit, barely enough to count as a shrug and said a simple, flat “Okay.” Richie wondered if this was the Lost Years Eddie, the one who worked for an insurance company and had a wife and an indeterminate amount of allergies and worries and, as a result, was spookily docile when he wasn’t raging. Not exactly the boy he had been but a hardened, distant version of it.

Then Eddie did it again. “How much for that?” This time he was pointing at an old metal toy train. Richie looked from Eddie’s pointer finger to his face, so still and calm, neither enthused nor antagonistic.

The old man put his palms flat on the case, and his pupils seem to expand to the size of half dollars. “I haven’t had a chance to research that one yet. And besides, sir, if I may say so, it doesn’t seem like it’s for you. As a matter of fact, I’m having a little trouble figuring out what it is you would like.”

“I don’t know. Trains are pretty cool. What would you say to twenty bucks?”

Pointedly ignoring the offer, Barlow’s smile thinned as he asked, “Could I direct your business partner’s interest to the window display? Richard, did you see anything you liked up there?”

Richie opened his mouth, but before he could gather wind, Eddie said, “He’s not interested. No fucking sale.”

Richie wondered if this was what watching a tennis match was like. He wouldn’t know, having once been invited to the US Open by some friend of a friend, only to spend most of it in a luxury box off his tits on mushrooms.

“No need for profanity… Eddie, was it?”

Eddie’s eyebrows were set like a horizon—flat, continuous, seemingly endless. “Yeah. Eddie. His business partner, remember?”

“I do. I do remember. How lucky he is… to have a partner like you.”

“Well, if you’re not selling the watch or the train, we’ll be going. Best of luck to you.”

There was a vicelike pinch at Richie’s elbow that he realized was Eddie’s hand. He looked down, took in Eddie’s fingers clamping around him, his wedding band winking in the sunlight streaming through the newly cleaned windows. Richie felt like he was being hypnotized.

Barlow’s voice seeped into his reverie. “Before you go, boys, I’m not opposed to taking items for consignment. What say I take that ring, Eddie? Happy to take it off your hand, as it were. I think Richard would be even happier. Wouldn’t you, Richard?”

Feeling like he’d been punched in the breadbasket, Richie staggered back a step. Eddie stiffened his posture to support Richie’s semi-swoon. The hand that had been at his elbow moved to his upper arm, gentle but firm.

“The ring has no value. Thanks for the offer, though. See you around, Mr. Barlow.” And then, despite being a welterweight and lacking four-plus inches on Richie, Eddie gave a sharp tug and Richie backpedaled gracelessly along with him.

“Come back soon, Richie Tozier. Come back soon, Eddie the business partner.” Barlow’s words rung out merrily along with the bells, accompanying their departure back onto the sidewalk.

They traveled a block in silence, Eddie’s hand still clutching Richie’s upper arm before Richie was able to croak out “Hadouken.”

“Yeah, no fucking shit ‘Hadouken.’ Goddamn it,” was Eddie’s reply.


	2. Choose Your Own Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: some talk of pedophilia and Richie's continued battle with internal and external homophobia

_Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night_

_Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light_

—Fleetwood Mac, “The Chain”

_Your adventure ends here._

—Traditional _Choose Your Adventure_ saying

Eddie knew how to combat at least one part of this particular Derry-sponsored bullshit. As soon as he and Richie were done touring the Capitol—which was every bit as mold-saturated and vermin-infested and gross as Richie had initially described it—and had made the short drive back to the house, Eddie pushed Richie into the kitchen and forcibly sat him at the island, then took a seat across from him.

“I need to tell you something, and it might seem like it’s unrelated to the weird shit that went down today, but I’m pretty sure it’s 100% related, okay?”

Richie, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since throwing down the _Hadouken_ gauntlet, nodded.

Mirroring his nodding, Eddie took in a breath, then took off his ring and placed it on the island. “Okay?”

Richie furrowed. “Okay what?”

“Okay means I’m separated. Okay means I’m getting divorced, but it’s a whole process and it’s going to take a while. Okay means whatever you and I are doing right now, I’m in. Like I told whatever it is that runs that shop that’s clearly some kind of front to steal babies or body-snatch people or, I don’t know, whatever other kind of creepy shit this fucking dump can come up with: this ring doesn’t have value anymore. And I should probably feel guilty for being so uninterested in Myra’s feelings, but I guess I’m exactly the kind of asshole who doesn’t feel remorse for throwing his wife over for his dumbass childhood friend. I’m mostly embarrassed by how easy it is for me to cheat and keep cheating all while you’re being uncharacteristically reserved and polite and not mentioning it. So… you should probably know that. If that helps.”

Reaching across to take Eddie’s hand in his, Richie said, “I’m reserved because I don’t want to jeopardize getting that dick.” Eddie rolled his eyes. “Also, I’m disappointed you didn’t call me your lover.”

“Well, I’m disappointed in you, like, in general, for being a pain in my ass.” Richie parted his lips; Eddie rocketed across and clapped his other hand over Richie’s mouth. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

Richie licked Eddie’s palm. Eddie took his hand away, wiped it on his pants, and continued. “Anyway, I figure if we learned anything from that fucking clown, it’s that we should confront the shit that scares us or makes us ashamed. Because that’s what Barlow was trying to use when he wasn’t trying to sell you the exact thing you wanted.”

“I get the Street Fighter thing. But… you don’t want to wear a fanny pack again, right? Please tell me you realize no grown-ass man should wear a fanny pack unless he’s a 20-something drug dealer.”

“Rich, I’m pretty sure that whole entire window display was for you.”

Richie’s forehead Shar-Peied in confusion. “What? Well, that’s fucking homophobic. Just because I’m _gay_ doesn’t mean I’m a pedophile. No, no way, it was _you_ : _your_ Thundercats shirt, _your_ fanny pack.”

“Rest assured, dude, I don’t want a youth-sized, moth-eaten tee shirt or a fanny pack. I’m not pining for my lost youth, and I’m 41 goddamn years old, I’m not going to wear a fucking fanny pack.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you pour yourself into that tee shirt. You’d look _foine_ in a crop top. Ouch! Fuck!” Eddie’s reply was to mash Richie’s hand until he could feel the fine bones grinding against one another. “Jesus Christ you’re mean. So what the fuck are we going to do next? Divorce or no divorce, you wanted to leave if shit got spooky, and I feel like this counts. I said our anti-safe bug-out word.”

Hopping down from his stool, Eddie grabbed a couple of juice glasses from the cupboard, then got the bottle of Knob Creek down from the top of the refrigerator and poured a generous splash into each glass. He pushed one over to Richie. “I… don’t know anymore.”

Richie tipped his back, drinking it in one swallow in direct violation of the bourbon’s sippability. “What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”

“I mean _I don’t know_ . It’s fucking weird. I’m the one who has the bad dream, right? But when we show up there, it’s all about you. I’d think that…” Eddie trailed off. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He only knew that for a time, when he was in the shop, he felt a sort of hollowness, like mental dead air, something he had never experienced in all his years of being Eddie Kaspbrak. Then, like someone had switched on a light, he was filled with certainty, the opposite of the clown’s message so many years ago: _there’s nothing here for you, Eddie Kaspbrak… nothing you’re looking for and nothing looking for you._ The watch, the train… all meant for other people, not for him. Richie was Richard, but Eddie was… just Eddie.

And Barlow had tipped one of his cards, it seemed. _I’m having a little trouble figuring out what you would like._

“It pisses me off. That’s all. It pisses me off and… and I want to figure it out and fight it and also I want you to be able to remodel that disgusting disaster of a theater like you wanted to. So… fuck that guy. If he comes after us, I know where we can find more fence posts.”

Richie stood up, drank Eddie’s portion of bourbon too, and then wrapped Eddie in his arms, nearly knocking him off the barstool. “I suppose this means I shouldn’t buy that Street Fighter cabinet.”

“Correct, dipshit. Co-fucking-rrect.”

“It was in mint condition. Hard to pass up.”

“Let’s not be reckless to the point of stupidity, okay?”

“Should I Chris Hansen it up? Keep pretending I’m into 13-year-old boys? Where do you think that would get me?”

“Arrested?”

“Good point.”

“I think you’re being purposely obtuse.”

Richie inhaled deeply, nose pressed into Eddie’s hair. “Yeah, a little.”

* * *

Despite the day’s excitement, Eddie was lights out promptly at 11. Richie laid beside him in the dark, marinating in the way Eddie had draped himself across him. Richie was dedicating a lot of the wattage in the scientific center of his brain to figuring out what he’d call it. In short: it was not exactly spooning, but not _not_ spooning. Richie wondered idly if he turned to his side, would Eddie adjust in his sleep and properly spoon him? Would he wake up? Would his body find a way to do this possessive draping if Richie were a wall instead of a floor?

Richie was thinking about asking Eddie in the morning over breakfast, then mapping out Eddie’s possible reactions and replies, which ranged from annoyed to gentle to the outside chance, the one Richie knew would probably not happen but that he was most afraid of: Eddie would awake from a fugue state (like Richie had read about in his mom’s battered paperback copy of _Sybil_ ), realize he was _married_ , a big ol’ 6 hetero on the Kinsey scale, and angrily tell Richie he was confused and had to go back to his wife...

...and Richie came to the realization he was asleep, because instead of being in bed pondering the cuddling habits and marital future of one Edward Francis Kaspbrak, he was sitting out on the deck with Beverly Marsh.

Bev had one foot propped up on the bony X at the bottom of the patio table. She looked cool and relaxed, like she had when she was a kid. She and Richie had that in common, he supposed: cultivating a devil-may-care, cool exterior to hide the agony underneath.

“That’s perceptive as fuck, Tozier,” Bev said with her outside voice, giving the table a little jolt for effect.

“Thanks. I should probably be more emotionally vulnerable and honest and all that shit. But sometimes that’s lame.” Richie tapped the toe of Bev’s tennis shoe with his bare foot.

Bev smiled. “I agree.”

Then it occurred to Richie, as long as they were being honest, to say, “Bev, this is a dream, right?”

“Sorta… you and I are both sleeping. It’s a little new to me to have a hang with someone else so I get the feeling that you’re getting used to the way the Deadlights rewired your brain.”

Richie shrugged, able to be casual here in this plane in a way he knew he wouldn’t be when he was conscious. “Or something is messing with us.”

Bev looked at him askance. “Why would you say that?”

“Eddie and I met an exciting new friend today. Pretty sure he was… well, not Pennywise exactly, but Pennywise _adjacent_.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Like your clothing line, Marsh, you are elegantly understated.”

“Well, I think you and I are alone here. I’ve spent enough time here post-clown to know the difference. Do you two need help?”

“No. I don’t think so. I think we’re going to pull a classic Derry move and ignore the existence of evil and see how far that gets us. Besides, I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I’m mad at you. You won’t let me tell you any of the good stuff about Eddie. ”

Bev shoved him. Richie felt pleasant, warm ripples of it through his body, sort of the opposite response to hitting his funny bone—like Bev was sending good vibes and her affection straight into his central nervous system. “Just because I hung out with a bunch of guys in my youth doesn’t mean I’m willing to swap locker-room talk, Tozier. I don’t want you to ruin the saintly image I have of sweet, cute little Eddie Kaspbrak.”

Barking out a laugh, Richie looked at Bev’s self-satisfied smirk. “Are you and I talking about the same undomesticated little Monchhichi? _Saintly_? Oh, Jesus, just because he was so polite out in public? Please.”

Drilling a fingertip into his deltoids, Bev sing-songed, “You didn’t deny he’s cu-ute.”

“Well, _duh_.”

They shared a smile. Then Bev’s affectionate expression changed to one of scrutiny, and Richie turned his eyes back to the rolling yard, the riverbank obscured by darkness.

“Richie?”

“Yeah, Red?”

“You can call for me, you know. Just… give me a ring, and Ben and I will be there.”

“Keep smilin’ and keep shinin’ knowing I can always count on you, huh?”

“For sure.” Then the smile left her voice. “And I figure you know this but: don’t buy anything from that shop.”

“Yep, got the memo on that.”

“And watch out for people who do go in there and buy stuff.”

“10-4. Anything else?”

But when Richie turned his head, Bev was gone. And when he looked out towards the river, a tall shadowy figure was approaching.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Richie blurted, an attempt to scramble to his feet unsuccessful. “Hey, don’t come any closer, motherfucker, I have a gun.”

“No, you don’t, asswipe.” Emerging from the shadows, a young Eddie Kaspbrak, rocking his Thundercats shirt and retro fanny pack like it was 1989, scowled. “You’ve never held a gun in your life, pussy.”

 _That’s not Eddie,_ Richie’s common sense told him. Still and all, it was pleasant to see young Eddie again. He had really loved that little shit. He tried for a teasing, dismissive tone, like the old days, and despite his best efforts to tap into the overpriced, underwhelming acting classes he’d taken when he first got to LA, he could hear a tremor in his voice. “Like you’ve held a gun, Spaghetti. Your mom would shit a brick.”

Eddie’s expression changed, a sly, seductive look that was out of place on any preteen’s face, but especially 13-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak’s face, and only underlined Richie’s original instinct that whatever had entered the scene definitely was, in the parlance of _Men in Black,_ wearing an Eddie suit. The creepy Boy-lita posturing was beginning to make Richie feel distinctly, deeply grossed out. “Oh, I’ve held a gun, though. Haven’t I? Want me to keep holding it? I bet you do. If that’s what you want, just say so. We can get outta here, you and me. Go back to the old rod and gun club.”

Unable to help himself, Richie let his earlier waking resentment take the wheel. “Hey! I’m not a _pedophile_ , you fucking dick. I don’t know if you cosmic horrors subscribe to the same newsletter as plain old human bigots, but _gay_ doesn’t equal _liking little boys_. I’m screwing _middle-aged_ Eddie, in case you didn’t get the memo.”

Not-Eddie frowned icily; it made him look a little like Damien Thorn. “Oh, but there was enough of you liking _this_ for me to cobble _this_ together. Seemed like you liked bits of _this_ little boy an _awful_ lot.”

“Yeah, guess you missed the part where I got a big dose of Derry brand Rohypnol and forgot all about my wonder years until I came back here. I think you got a back issue, fuckstick. I was jerking off to _that_ Eddie when I was _that_ Eddie’s age. Bad invasive mindfuck intel, Creepshow. So why don’t you take your cute little Halloween costume and fuck off to someone else’s dream?”

In a blink, it was grown-up Eddie. Richie was amused to see that Barlow (it had to be him, or _it,_ or _whatever_ ) remembered all the details of Eddie’s outfit that day but kept the fanny pack. Devil was in the details, he thought to himself with a chuckle. Eddie would enjoy that bit.

Hopefully he could tell him, anyway… Richie began to worry that perhaps Barlow had some kind of Freddy Kruger power and could kill him in his sleep.

“How about I show you what’s in here, Richard? I bet you’d like it. I’ll give it to you for a song.” The Not-Eddie ran the tip of his tongue over his top lip while unzipping the plastic zipper of the fanny pack. The unholy chittering sound produced by the zipper made all the good vibes Bev had sent into his bones evaporate. Richie wanted out. He didn’t want to fight with whatever this was anymore. Since he couldn’t get out of his chair, he turned his face to the patio door and saw a silhouette in the kitchen. Eddie…

And Richie startled awake to find he was nose to nose with Eddie in the safety of their bed.

“Was it him?” 

Eddie was whispering, tone grouchy but concerned, his breath gusting across Richie’s lips. Richie looked at the thin bow of Eddie’s mouth, remembering Not Eddie’s pink tongue and haunted zipper, and said, “Yep. You seem to have made an impression on him.”

Eddie pressed closer, wrapping one arm around Richie so that the two of them were clamped together. “Was it…”

Eddie trailed off, so Richie picked up the thread. “A sex dream? I mean, isn’t every dream with you in it a sex dream?” Richie ran a hand along Eddie’s side, letting his hand span the width of Eddie’s hip. “I would have preferred less statutory honeytrap shit and insect noises if that guy Barlow is taking notes. Those are things you and I haven’t introduced into our bedroom routine, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“There go my plans for Friday, I guess.”

Richie barked a surprised laugh into Eddie’s hair. “Oh, and you were wearing a fanny pack. Though it was age-appropriate for part of the dream.”

Eddie sighed and pressed his arms together with enough pressure for Richie to squeak a little. “Whatever this guy is, he’s fucking gross.”

“Agreed.” For a few seconds, Richie luxuriated in Eddie’s protective embrace. “Were you awake this whole time?”

“No, just the last 30 minutes or so. Woke up, couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“Hey, Bev stopped by! In my dream! At the beginning. It was really, really real, like she was here visiting. And she refused to let me tell her anything that had to do with you being sexy, just like in real life. It’s very unfair. She called you sweet, if you can believe it.”

“Yeah? Did you agree with her? Or did you talk a bunch of shit about me?”

“Little of both.”

Eddie squeezed hard enough to cause Richie to emit a half-serious gasping wheeze. “Is she on her way?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, she offered, but I didn’t take her up on it. I feel like this is ours. I mean, we’re two pretty smart guys. We can figure this out.”

Eddie freed Richie from his embrace and leaned back so he could look Richie in the eye. “I’m sure the other Losers would agree that’s what you and I were known for: our brains and our impulse control.”

“Hey, we grew up. Also, we were fucking _right_ about how dumb it was to split up. You got barfed on and stabbed and for what? That ritual didn’t do dick.”

In the dim light, Richie could see the depthless crevices of Eddie’s laugh lines and dimples. “Mike put a lot of time and effort into that research.”

“A lot of theft and drug trips, more like. Shit, I did all that in my mid-20s and I didn’t get anyone stabbed.” Richie let that rest a beat and a half, then tacked on, “...I think.”

“I wish I’d known you when you were in your 20s,” Eddie said, letting his palm play a lazy game of Pong between Richie’s shoulder blades.

“I wish too. I could’ve been one of your dorm room sexual experiments.” Eddie rewarded that statement with a firm pinch to a tender portion of skin just below his armpit. “Yee-ouch, dude, that’s going to bruise. Damn!”

“I hope it does. Serves you right, asshole. And back to the original topic at hand: are you sure we can handle this without Bev and Ben and Bill and Mike? I mean, wasn’t that the whole point of the last thing?”

“I mean, kind of. But I feel like last time helps us avoid some of the pitfalls of a situation like this. It’s like when you’d get a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ book from the library and, like, read it once purely on instinct. This time is like the _second_ time you read a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ and you can identify all the hints about the bad endings.”

“I used to read both options and skip all the bad endings.”

Richie shook his head in mock disappointment. “That’s a violation of the spirit of _Planet of the Dragons_ , Eds, but since it diversifies our _Choose Your Own Adventure_ approach to this particular problem, I’ll allow it.”

* * *

Eddie awoke alone in bed to the smell of coffee and bacon and the sound of gentle clicks and clacks and the low hum of a radio station from outside the door. After a pit stop in the bathroom to brush his teeth and rearrange what a night of sleep had done to his hair, he emerged to find Richie slicing up avocados and a lemon. 

“We’re gonna follow the trend here, Eds. Now that you’re up, I’ll put the toast down, and we’ll have avocado toast just like the kids are doing. Wanna celebrate the news from your allergist that you’re not actually allergic to eggs? I can poach ‘em, fry ‘em, whatever you desire.”

For someone who had been stalked by an evil boutique owner in his dreams, Richie seemed … well, _cheerful_ , especially by Richie’s usual morning standard of being low-level grumpy. Eddie said as much. “What’s with the perky attitude?”

“Just ‘cause I asked you about _des œufs_ , _mon râleur_?”

“Well, that, and the Celine Dion on the radio.”

“Next best thing to _des œufs_ in the morning is _la reine._ ” Celine herself punctuated Richie’s observation by reaching the last chorus in “It’s All Coming Back to Me.” Richie pointed to the radio with the tongs he’d been using to move bacon from a sheet pan to a paper-towel-lined plate forcefully. “ _Bravissimo_ , _non?_ ”

“Yeah, she’s great. Everyone knows that. Are you still...we’re going to sign the lease today, right?”

Cracking two eggs into a heated skillet, Richie bobbed his head. “Yep.” Eddie kept staring at Richie’s back until he finally noticed. “I don’t know, it’s almost exciting this time around. Ever since my whole _Choose Your Own Adventure_ improv, I feel confident, y’know? You, me, forearmed like some amazing combination of Laurie Strode and Marty McFly, going into battle like it’s a date night… it’s kinda rad!”

Eddie couldn’t help but smile, though he tried to smother it with a look he hoped communicated mild stern disapproval and skepticism. “As long as you’re demonstrating surprising enthusiasm, do you want to go to the hardware store and buy glue traps so we can try to cut down on the vermin infestation ahead of an exterminator?”

Switching off the stove and popping up the toast, Richie turned to Eddie, back to the cabinets, and said, “Edward, I would _love_ to go to the hardware store and buy weapons of roach destruction with you. There’s nothing I would rather do. Do you want an egg on… oh, no way.” 

Eddie watched in bemusement as Richie stopped his question with a gasp, dropped the spatula into the pan, and turned up the radio.

And Eddie, whose mother had owned _Barry Manilow II_ on vinyl, recognized the song as Richie approached him, arms extended with a surprising amount of elegance. “But _before_ we buy glue traps, hot stuff, _I remember all my life—_ ironic, _non_ ?— _raining down as cold as ice…_ ”

Despite his usual inclination to resist Richie’s whims, Eddie approached, only to find himself rebuffed. “Oh-ho, no, you’re not leading.”

Sourly, Eddie said, “Just because I’m shorter than you…”

“It’s not that, Mr. Sensitive.”

“Well, then, what? I can lead. I’ve had lessons.” _For my wedding,_ Eddie declined to add.

“Me too. From a heretofore unnamed _Dancing with the Stars_ instructor for several months to prepare for a bit part in a Will Ferrell movie about competitive dancing that ended up in preproduction hell after _Semi-Pro_ bombed.”

Eddie dropped his arms into follow position, which Richie approved of with a quiet “Attaboy.” Richie held him in a confidently formal way, his posture vastly improved by what Eddie assumed was muscle memory from his lessons. After gliding them out of the kitchen and into the living room, narrowly avoiding the coffee table, then spinning Eddie away and reeling him in again, he was forced to grumble “Showoff,” though he smiled a little when he said it.

“I take my craft seriously, babe, and _I never realized/how happy you made/oh Eddie_.”

Eddie scoffed audibly and also found, with no small degree of self-recrimination, that a flush was burning up from his neck to his cheeks.

“ _You came_ , yeah you did, _without taking_ / _but I sent you away..._ ” Richie continued.

Averting his gaze from over Richie’s shoulder so that he could keep from laughing, Eddie sniped, “I don’t think Weird Al has anything to worry about.”

“I know Weird Al!”

Memories of a young Richie playing the cassette of _Even Worse_ in the clubhouse and trying, and occasionally succeeding, to mimic Weird Al’s nasal delivery during “Lasagna” seeped into his mind. A memory of watching the music video for “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi” with a peculiar knot in his stomach during his college years also rose to the surface. “Would Weird Al admit to knowing you?”

“Well, we only met at the one party, but I was surprisingly sober and polite and articulate, so who knows.” Richie dropped his arms into a modified middle-school dance posture, putting his hands on Eddie’s waist and leaving room for the Holy Spirit between the two of them. Distracted by how Richie’s large hands were nearly able to span the circumference of his waist, Eddie stumbled a bit and stepped on Richie’s foot. “See, that’s why I was leading.”

Eddie wanted to tell Richie to shut up. He wanted to remind Richie they were supposed to go into downtown Derry and buy glue traps. But instead, he pressed himself along Richie’s front, pelvis forward, and slid his hands down to Richie’s pancake ass.

Hunched over to nuzzle at Eddie’s ear, Richie purred, “Be honest: it was the dancing that did it for you, oh, Eddie.”

Eddie wondered, as Barry Manilow sang _yesterday’s a dream/I face the morning/crying on a breeze_ as he ground himself into Richie’s thigh, if he’d be cursed to find this song inappropriately erotic for the remainder of his days. He answered Richie’s question by running his hands under Richie’s tee shirt (today was a _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ tee Eddie didn’t recall seeing in rotation).

“Hey, the eggs are getting cold,” Richie mentioned with a definite lack of conviction.

“I don’t even know if I like eggs.” This statement Eddie punctuated by jostling Richie’s tee shirt around, a sort of nonverbal suggestion to take it off without actually making the effort.

Manilow and the string section reached the modulation for the final chorus, and Eddie reclaimed his role as the lead and steered Richie backwards towards the bedroom.

* * *

_Tuesdays and Thursdays. By Appointment Only._

_The sign was familiar—of course it was, as it had been one of his constant companions over the years, a way to tantalize_

(souls)

_potential customers, but this time he was on the receiving end of the sign. It was hanging on The Capitol, just as plain as day._

_Certain he had entered a state of slumber, he recognized now that though the place had the appearance of Derry, it was Somewhere Else, Somewhere he hadn’t been in quite some time. Eons, in fact, but who's counting, really?_

_He made his way to a bridge spanning the river and was greeted by a young man wearing a pink tee shirt and an I ♥️ DERRY hat._

_“Afraid I can’t let you cross unless you answer the riddle,” the young man said._

_Ignoring the young man’s provocative statement, he asked, “Who are you?”_

_“That’s the riddle, isn’t it?” the young man replied. “When first I appear I seem mysterious, but when explained I'm nothing serious.” He chuckled after saying that, as if acknowledging a private joke. Then the young man’s face grew grim, and he stared… stared as though he could see beyond his disguise to the ancient creature below._

_“I can. I can see you. Wish I’d seen him too. The Big Guy saw him, but it was a little too late.” The young man pointed to the riverbank. Floating gently against the place where the water met the grit and rock was a bright and jaunty pantaloon leg. Inside the cuff was a great, heavy telson.Tied to the fierce sharp end was a logy ribbon; tied to the ribbon was a barely inflated red balloon._

_Under his feet, the road shifted. It became mucky and slippery and, underneath, hard and bony. It smelled like stagnant freshwater and, below that, a more ancient smell of burning gases and supernova._

_“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”_

_“Nah, the Big Guy sent me along to talk to you. To warn you, I guess, though The Big Guy thinks you don’t generally listen to reason or warnings. He’ll stay out of your way—he’s still resting after a… kind of a health scare—but he suggests you don’t tangle with the two who were in your shop the other day.”_

_“Is that so? And why would…”_

_The young man, one corner of his mouth lifted sardonically, waved his hand at the telson._

_“They did seem… different. The darker one in particular. Is it because of Maturin?”_

_The young man smirked. “Now you’re getting it, hot stuff.”_

_Over the young man’s shoulder was a glimmer coming from the weathered wood. It burned his eyes to look at it so he looked back to the young man._

_“And if I don’t heed his warning?”_

_Taking off the I ♥️ DERRY hat, the young man gave a theatrical scratch at the crown of his head, performing a sort of thoughtful elderly squinch of his mouth, the sort of brain-cell-firing tic performed by thousands of grizzled old Mainers over the years. “Well, I s’pose…”_

_And he discovered, with alarm, that he was sliding down the riverbank, which was really just a slimy old shell, towards the cheerful bit of cloth, which didn’t reside so much in a river as it did in infinite darkness._


	3. A Bag of Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is rotten in the City of Derry; Richie and Eddie head to a hardware store and rely on Mike Hanlon's endless knowledge of Haunted Maine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: ongoing internalized and externalized homophobia, including a slur; references to canonical violence, as well as other Kingverse violence; Richie being Richie.

“—and you don’t have the slightest idea if I’ve sold you something which will really work or just another bag of dreams… the kind that turn into nightmares when you give them a poke and a whistle. I’m sure you believe all this now; I have a great gift of persuasion, if I do say so myself.”

—Leland Gaunt, _Needful Things_

Before signing the lease, which was delayed for several days for a building inspection _and_ an expedited multi-day extermination effort—a conciliation to Eddie, who couldn’t stop talking about the bugs and the various scat he could identify—Richie let Eddie talk him into requesting Ben’s expert eye for a Zoom walk-through. That quickly resulted in Ben’s Boston-based team of architects being assigned to draw up designs and make a project proposal. When asked, Ben provided a guesstimate for projected time for full completion of the renovation.

Which was the first time Richie considered taking Eddie up on his offer to bail. “Two _years_? What the fuck?”

“It’s a massive undertaking, Rich.” Ben, ever patient, ever placid, absorbed Richie’s outburst; Beverly, on the other hand, had a cantankerous look on her face that would have given him a warm burst of nostalgia if it wasn’t directly aimed at him.

“Sorry, I’m not mad at you, I’m… surprised. It takes Chase Bank, like, four months to slap a building together, that’s all.”

“This is different. It’s an old building. The good news about that is you can apply for a grant through the National Trust Preservation Fund; the… not so good news is it’ll take time and thoughtfulness and attention that a brand-new building doesn’t always require. Though, you know, it should.”

Richie sighed “Nerrrrrrd”, which earned him a kick to the ankle from Eddie. Bev smiled approvingly; Richie glared at her.

“Haystack, as always, thank you for your honesty and your support. I guess pausing on the lease was a good idea so I can know what we’re really in for. Do me a favor and don’t tell Bill, okay? I’d like Eddie and me to have a two-week head start to Bermuda.”

“What’s in it for us?” Petting the diamond-shaped head of her and Ben’s sleepy German Shepherd, Bev looked like a combination Bond Girl-Bond Villain.

“I’ll stop asking you how big Ben’s dong is. How’s that for a start?”

Bev yelped out a short, surprised laugh; Ben blushed; Eddie growled “What?” not unlike when Richie had jokingly offered to sacrifice him in the ineffective Ritual of Chud.

Extending his arms to their full span, he said, “Okay, I’m going to start moving my hands _slowly_ towards one another. Red, you tell me where to stop.”

“I’ll tell you when to fucking stop: _now_. Stop _now_. Jerk-off.” Eddie punctuated this with a barely pulled punch to Richie’s side. “Ben, thank you. Bev, sorry. We’re going now. Bye.”

Loudly and before Eddie could push the End Meeting for All button, Richie managed to say, “ _Speaking_ of jerking off, Eddie woke me up this morning by…”

Eddie pushed Richie over on the couch and pinned his hands by kneeling on his wrists; Richie selfishly neglected to point out to Eddie being held down and straddled wasn’t quite the punishment he thought it was.

“Oh, my _God_ , what is wrong with you? Ben is never going to talk to us again!”

“Don’t you think it’s cute how pink he gets? I always thought it was cute. Now there’s _two_ ways I can accomplish that.”

“Are you being a pain in the ass because you don’t want to wait two years? Is that it?” Pushing back to gently release Richie’s wrists, Eddie then took one of Richie’s hands in his.

“No.” Even to his own ears, Richie’s tone was petulant. He closed his eyes, certain he was completing the picture of a toddler tantrum.

He felt Eddie’s broad thumb rubbing over his chin, tracing his jawbone until he reached Richie’s earlobe, which he tugged gently. “Dude.”

Richie sighed again. It felt like all he’d done was sigh since the reality of this project started to settle in. “I thought… I don’t know, I thought our stacks of cash meant this could happen as fast as your divorce. Then in six months, I’d have a barcade, you’d be single, and I could…” The words _tell everyone I’m gay as a picnic_ stuck in Richie’s throat, “... I’d have a real life.” He stroked Eddie’s wrist, felt the solid joint under his skin and the fine hairs pointing towards his hand. “As one of America’s poet laureates once said, ‘I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over/I want to know right now what will it be?’” 

Eddie’s thumb rasped over Richie’s jawline again; then, he added a gentle-but-with-purpose cheek-pat in the mix. “You’re so fucking impatient. And our lives won’t be off to a very good start if you’re basing your expectations on the dewy opening credits of _Dawson’s Creek_.”

“Maybe instead of this renovation, I should go back and pitch a reboot of _Dawson’s Creek_ to Netflix. ‘Imagine Capeside, only instead of the warm shores of North Carolina, we base it in the cold, rocky heart of Maine? And what if we added a supernatural element? Teens love vampires and killer clowns and shit. _Saw_ did _beaucoup_ box office.’”

“How about this? How about you sit with this knowledge about two years worth of work and money and patience for a day, and then you decide whether you want to continue with Operation Restore Shithole or if you want to go back to your life as a guy who says _pitch_ with zero-percent irony?”

“Eddie, you’re as sarcastic and sourpussy and gamine as Joey Potter.” A mighty eyeroll was Eddie’s response. Richie pointed an accusatory finger. “Just like Joey Potter.”

“If you’re done, can we go get groceries and return 80 bucks worth of glue traps to the hardware store?” Eddie dismounted and walked towards the kitchen.

“I hate that place,” Richie hollered at Eddie’s retreating figure. “Can’t _you_ go in there? The billion glue traps were your idea.”

Standing in the doorway, clad in his going-out hoodie, Eddie’s expression was a very Eddie blend of derisive and smug. “Which _Dawson’s_ character do _you_ sound like? Which character was a lame whiny-ass baby?”

Richie groused quietly to himself, “I’m not Dawson.”

* * *

It had been over a week since their meeting with Barlow and his nocturnal visit to Richie’s dreamscape. All had been quiet since then, which Eddie chalked up to a combination of luck and the fact that he and Richie had steered clear of downtown Derry.

The hardware store, Garton’s, was on the same city block as Peculiar Treasures, so their route took them past. The GRAND OPENING awning flapped in the breeze, the window display was now a generic and benign collection of tchotchkes and old books, and the door bore the message TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS 11-5. ALL OTHER DAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

The same odd blank calm rolled over him as Eddie remembered the sound of the bells when Richie flung the door open, the sunlight sparkling in but not quite reaching the counter.

_Nothing here for you, Eddie. Nothing looking for you._

Eddie barely heard Richie’s wordless sound of protest as he reached out to try the door.

Despite the fact that it was a Thursday during regular posted business hours, the door did not budge whether it was pushed or pulled. Peering into the windows, Eddie didn’t see Barlow at the counter or amongst the various merchandise and knick-knacks.

“Eds, whatcha doin’?” Richie lilted, playing off his inquiry like a joke, but Eddie could hear the tension.

“Just… checking.” Eddie tried the door one more time. He felt like he wasn’t entirely in the driver’s seat during the process and, in a weird way, was comforted by the idea. For all his years bouncing between the Methodist church his mother attended and the handful of Catholic Masses he attended with his grandmother, his dad’s mom, before she passed away, he never felt particularly touched by the Spirit; something about being literally _born again_ in the bowels of their shitty, haunted hometown gave him something like a baseline acceptance that there was some kind of benevolent force larger than himself—and, by extension, larger than any ancient extraterrestrial who had imprinted onto clowns of all fucking thing—that could occasionally get off Its ass and help out.

However, Eddie’s religious awakening was still his own. He’d lived as an anxious New Yorker for far too many years of his life, so he gave the door the only sacred gesture he truly believed in: he flipped the locked door off with both hands.

“Your belligerence is truly impressive and sexy, man.” Richie reached out and cradled Eddie’s elbow, then jostled it playfully. In Richie’s eyes, Eddie could see he was thinking about something more daring in terms of PDA, but despite giving Richie the space to do so by taking a quarter of a step closer, Richie made no further effort to embrace him or tongue kiss him.

In a gesture of solidarity, Eddie reached out and quickly squeezed Richie’s side. “Come on, you can continue your shitty flirting in the hardware store. I’m looking forward to all your hacky innuendos about drilling and hammering.”

Eddie and Richie had already been to Garton’s together once before. Richie had never articulated to Eddie why he disliked it so much. Eddie knew why _Eddie_ disliked it: it was musty in the way that only a space both underutilized and too full could be, and the scent and narrowness reminded him of his own childhood home. It wasn’t as deeply upsetting and panic-inducing as Keene’s was; nevertheless, Eddie was wary in a way that was uncomfortably familiar to him. As with the last visit, he felt the need to rush.

At the combination check-out/locksmith station stood a man roughly their age, vaguely familiar in the way all the residents of Derry were to Eddie. Once he and Richie were at the counter, the acrid combination of unwashed sweat and cheap whiskey reached Eddie in a wave. He stifled the urge to gag as he switched over to exclusively breathing through his mouth; in his peripheral, he caught Richie giving him a quick, nervous glance.

The man’s gazed wandered over the two of them, eyes seeming to bridge the unnatural gap between hazy drunkenness and the practiced predatory meanness of a lifelong bully. “Well, now. What can I do for you boys?”

Eddie could clearly hear the slur intended behind the word _boys._ Though he didn’t look at Richie, he could sense the shift in his posture.

Eddie thought of his benediction at the door of Peculiar Treasures. _Eat shit and fuck you_ , he thought to himself and tossed the bag unceremoniously onto the counter. “Returning these. Receipt’s in there.”

The man looked at the bag but didn’t move to pick it up or retrieve the receipt. Instead, his hand wandered to a rusty old throwing star tucked snug against the cash register. He stroked it absently with his fingers and said, to the throwing star more than to Eddie, “Store credit only on returns.”

Eddie was looking at the hand-lettered sign that reiterated the gentleman’s point. Though the long-standing part of Eddie primed for combative customer-service interactions champed at the bit, he thought again of Barlow, looked at the tetanus-laden throwing star, then said, “Fine.”

The man staggered a step as he got down from the stool, opened a drawer, and pulled out a ledger-like book. It landed on the counter with a crack that made Richie jump slightly. The man took in Richie slyly and began sifting through the glue traps. “Don’t I know you? Ain’t you on TV or somethin'?”

“Sometimes,” Richie replied, his voice muted, the word directed straight into his own collarbone.

“What’re you doing here? Shootin’ a movie or somethin’?”

Eddie answered tersely on Richie’s behalf. “We grew up here.” As the man continued filling out the store credit slip with a childlike scrawl while also keeping one eye on RIchie and one eye on the throwing star, Eddie was finally able to place him. “Aren’t you Ted Garton? Class of ‘92?”

The man stopped writing, put the pen down and really took Eddie in for what seemed like the first time. “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

“Eddie Kaspbrak. I was three grades behind you but we went to summer Bible camp together for a few years. Didn’t I see your name in the paper a few weeks ago?”

Quickly, Garton’s hand went to the rusty throwing star. Eddie thought of the counselor he’d had briefly in the late 2010s who suggested having a grounding object when he felt stressed. Eddie now realized that “stressed” was the counselor working his way up to informing Eddie he had anxiety. The star did seem to have _some_ kind of effect on Garton, though he seemed less calm and more stupefied. “Yeah, yeah, that’s my name. My son’s name. He was picked up with some of his friends for roughing up a couple of fags. Cops’re holdin’ him without bail. Callin’ it a hate crime. Everything’s a hate crime nowadays. Can’t say Christmas. Can’t refuse service to…” 

Garton trailed off.

Eddie looked over at Richie to find he was speed-walking out of the store.

Without thinking, Eddie reached out and took the throwing star. Already knowing the answer, he demanded. “Where’d you get this?”

Garton’s pupils dilated as though he had been thrust into darkness. “Give that back,” he mewled. The desperation made Eddie feel sick, though a dark sliver of him, the one that had stood tall behind a mildewed shower curtain and felt the blade of a knife slide out of his own flesh before he jammed it into Bowers’s heavy breastbone, felt the thrill of surprise and control.

“Your son didn’t ‘rough up’ those guys: he fucking _killed_ one of them. You want this back? _Fetch_ , asshole.” Squaring up, Eddie pulled back his arm and threw the star across the store into a closed office door at the very end of the aisle, where it landed with a muted _tick_.

Fixing Eddie with a brief, murderous glare, Garton released a garbled string of consonants that didn’t add up to identifiable words and lurched off down the aisle to retrieve it.

Without a second thought, Eddie turned on his heel and made a hasty retreat out of the store. It only took him a few extra steps towards the alley to find Richie resting his forehead against the brick wall. Though his eyes were squeezed shut, he must have heard Eddie’s footfall; he murmured, “Sorry. Thought I was going to barf so I figured I better leave.”

Putting his arm across Richie’s shoulders, Eddie leaned in and placed his forehead on Richie’s shoulder and sighed. Eddie’s inclination was to say _Don’t be fucking stupid_ ** _,_** and though he had no doubt Richie would understand the affection and intent behind the words, Eddie decided, given all the events of the past few weeks, some measure of non-combative tenderness was called for. So he simply said, “Don’t apologize. Jesus, Rich,” and held onto him as he continued to breathe shakily and steady himself against the brick wall.

“They murdered that guy. I was at the bridge. I saw the crime scene tape. I mean, Mike said it wasn’t far from where the clown left him a message and the body was…” Richie stopped to spit, then breathe deeply for a five-count, “... _mutilated_ , but those fucking jerks threw him over the bridge.”

“I know. I know.”

Richie put an arm around Eddie’s waist and cinched him closer, pushed away from the wall and adjusted so he had him in a proper embrace. “Fuck, Bev told me. She told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Not to hang around anyone who had been in Barlow’s store. Did you see that throwing star? Exactly the kind of grimy junk he’d peddle out of there.”

“Yeah, I might have… thrown it.” Eddie felt Richie’s body stiffen in shock, so didn’t surprise him when Richie pushed back and held him at arm’s length.

“What? You touched it? Are you okay?” Richie took Eddie’s right hand in both of his and turned it over.

“Yeah. I mean, we probably shouldn’t go back in there, but…”

“Of all the times for you to be chill, Eds. Holy fuck.” Running his thumb over Eddie’s Bowers scar, Eddie watched Richie stare with a sort of disbelief-admiration cocktail. “You _threw_ it? Is this a _brand_ you’re cultivating now?”

Looking into Richie’s eyes, mostly cleared of fear and anxiety, Eddie felt an odd relapse of shyness. Adoration hadn’t been in short supply over the past four weeks, but it had taken a decidedly more naked and physical bent. Though Eddie _also_ wasn’t used to receiving daily verbal observations about his “Ryan Reynolds abs” or his “hot fresh buns,” he had two comfortable paths to resolution in those situations: he could do what he did as a kid and yell at Richie, or he could do what he’d been doing for the past three-plus weeks and have sex with Richie.

Feeling like neither was the appropriate reaction, Eddie tried something new and pressed his face into Richie’s sternum, muttering “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“My hero,” Richie sighed into Eddie’s hair, pressing a kiss into his part. “I’d like to break into that place after dark and steal the security footage.”

Eddie allowed himself to bask and enjoy Richie’s bear hug for a few more seconds before saying, as evenly as he could, “We really should go home now. Garton was pissed, not to mention possessed or some shit.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I wish we’d saved that Storm-like ability to create weather for today. I get the feeling that we’re not done with this chapter. And not just because we now have a carbon copy of Bowers walking around chock full of homophobia and paternal fury armed with an old weapon from the back of _Black Belt_ magazine.”

As he and Richie walked back to the car, they had occasion to observe several other Derry residents in altered states: clutching some moldy, rotting thing, talking to themselves, or, in one alarming instance, simply sitting in the driver’s seat of a car staring blankly through the windshield, face plastered with an eerie rictus of a smile.

As Eddie belted himself in, he felt that odd sense of stillness seep into him once again and without knowing where the thought came from, he said, “We have to call Mike.”

Richie turned in his seat and smiled faintly. “And not _just_ because he’s the only Loser left who doesn’t know we’re banging, I assume.”

As though his body had turned on some kind of powerful Stillness defroster, Eddie squawked, “ _Bill knows?_ ”

* * *

Mike was in Pensacola, not far from the Mississippi border. He FaceTimed with Richie and Eddie from a cozy-looking room at the bed and breakfast he was holed up at, completing the picture by rocking slowly in his room’s rocking chair.

“Hiya, Mikey. Pensacola, huh? Didn’t want to go full dirtbag and visit Jacksonville?”

Mike’s easy smile filled the screen. “There’s a lighthouse on a naval base here. They say it’s haunted. I’m checking it out. Eating some oysters and catfish. What are you two up to? Still in Derry?”

“Yeah, yeah, still in Derry. That’s on me now. Eddie finished PT a few days ago. I started poking around The Capitol. I was thinking about renovating it. Now we’re not so sure. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.... which still works, since Circle K continues to dominate Maine’s convenience store scene. You all should really think about letting a 7-11 or an AM/PM in here, man.”

Nodding thoughtfully, as though considering Richie’s diversion, Mike continued to rock in silence.

Richie looked at Eddie; Eddie looked back impatiently; Mike rocked.

“I’m sleeping with Richie. Richie and I are sleeping together. And also I’m getting a divorce.”

The breathless rush of words, so reminiscent of adolescent Eddie’s natterings, surprised Richie into a barking sort of laugh-shout. “Exactly in that order.”

Eddie punched Richie in the arm, and it was Mike’s turn to laugh.

“Well, thanks, I guess. Ben and Bev sort of left their situation unspoken, so I suppose I appreciate the transparency.” Mike’s smile was very even and placid and patient. Richie sighed affectionately, caught off-guard by Mike’s easy acceptance and love.

Mike continued, “I imagine that’s not the only reason you’re calling me.”

“No. I haven’t consulted with Eddie, but open invitation for a threesome, of course.” Eddie sighed mightily and smeared his hands all over his face. Having gotten the reaction he wanted, Richie continued in a more serious vein, “But back to the strange things… in your journeys through the creeptastic history of this area, did you ever run across anything about a guy running a five-and-dime store? Sells people shit that makes them entranced or possessed or shit like that?”

Mike stopped rocking. “Yes. Yes, I remember something like that. Not in Derry, though. About 20 or 25 years ago, downstate in Castle Rock.”

“Where Frank Dodd was from?” Based on Eddie’s shaky tone, it was clear to Richie he had hung onto his childhood fear of the wolf in sheriff’s deputy clothing who murdered women (and one little girl—man, _so_ much child murder in their geographic vicinity, Richie realized).

“That’s the place. About a year or so ago, there was an auction at old Sheriff Alan Pangborn’s place. I bought a few lots of books and papers… and jumbled in with the lot was a few journals. I went back to the time and events he referenced in the journal, about a shop called Needful Things, and there was nothing in the local papers except a small advertisement about a grand opening and then… some obituaries, but… yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“So what did everyone’s favorite duly elected lawman have to say?”

Mike leaned forward, eyes aglow. “First, what have _you_ seen?”

“We’re forever indebted to you, Mike, and I know it, but… your enjoyment of this shit is bordering on Fox Mulder levels of self-destructive kookiness.” Richie sought Eddie’s eyes and found that he was nodding in agreement while rubbing his hands nervously on his knees.

“Richie’s right, Mike. And you know it pains me to say it.”

Mike smiled, the same easy smile he had worn when Eddie had unceremoniously foisted the news of his and Richie’s hanky-panky onto him. “Old habits die hard. I was in the research business a long time.”

“The owner seems to be an older guy named Barlow. We went into his shop over a week ago, but it seemed like he already knew we were here. Eddie had a bad dream, and then after we met him, he was front and center in one of _my_ dreams. The shop window—it had a mint condition Street Fighter cabinet and a mannequin dressed up like Eddie.” Ever the performer, Richie paused, then said slyly, “In case I didn’t mention it: I’m gay and I’m super sweet on Eddie Bear here.”

Shaking his head, Mike laughed, “Gotcha.”

“We hadn’t seen much of him since, but today, we were in a local store, and it was clear that the guy had been in Barlow’s store. He had a shitty old throwing star. Oh, and in a fun coincidence, he’s the father of one of the kids who are awaiting trial for killing Adrian Mellon.”

Shifting his gaze slightly, Mike said, “Eddie, you’ve been quiet. Anything to add to this you think is significant or might be helpful?”

“I think maybe…” Eddie seemed torn, looking at Richie with his forehead’s worry ditch deep between his eyes. “I think maybe whatever—this is so fucking weird, I feel _weird_ —whatever _brought_ me _back_ makes me, like, _connected_ to whatever is happening. I don’t know, Mike, you understand this shit better than we do, but all I know is that physical therapy helped me get stronger and regain balance, but it didn’t give me an ability to know shit I shouldn’t know.”

“Like what?” Mike and Richie asked the question at the same time, but at different volumes and with markedly different pitch.

Pulling at his own hair out of discomfort and frustration, Eddie half-shouted, “I don’t know, like… I knew today the shop would be closed if I tried it, even though it should have been open. I knew when we were _in_ the store that if I asked Barlow about buying something, he’d tell me no. He didn’t seem to _know_ me the way he knew Richie. And Rich, you said he was _in_ your dream. He wasn’t _in_ mine. I know I sound crazy but I can’t stop it, it just happens, like it’s me but it’s _not me_.”

Over the speaker of Richie’s iPhone, Mike said, “Eds, Eds, it’s okay,” while Richie wrapped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed. “Babe, did you think we wouldn’t believe you? _Us_? After _everything_?”

“But it’s not useful to us if I can’t control it or don’t know how to fucking _weaponize_ it against this thing.”

“Look, I know this is going to sound a lot like last time,” Mike began slowly, “but in his journal, Pangborn talked a lot about _belief_ . He did it differently than we did, and some of what he wrote didn’t exactly make sense to me at the time I was reading it, but it shared a commonality. Pangborn was grieving, had been grieving the loss of his wife and son. He thought something about his grief and some of his experiences with another situation in Ludlow helped him avoid Gaunt—that was the shop owner’s name during that time—and his influence and figure out a way to gain the upper hand on him. Eds, I imagine your… _situation_ is a ‘similar yet different’ variety. Whatever happened to bring you back could have you, y’know, flying under this guy’s radar. So to speak.”

Eddie pressed his face into Richie’s shoulder for a moment, then leaned back against the couch. “Cold fucking comfort but it’s better than nothing, I guess.”

“I take it Pangborn’s upper hand didn’t end in crushing his blackened heart, huh?” Richie’s bitterness was palpable.

Mike looked as disappointed as Richie sounded. “No. From the sounds of it, he was able to grab back some of… well, what he _believed_ were some townspeople's’ souls. Then it sounds like he ran him out of town or Gaunt fled. I remember that being hard to figure out as well.”

“Don’t suppose you squirreled all these artifacts away somewhere safe before you scooted off to the Panhandle for oysters and pirate ghosts?”

Richie could have predicted Mike’s confident smile before the end of his own sentence. “In the basement of the library, safely locked in a storage closet. The banker’s boxes say Pangborn.”

“Good thing the library is no longer an active crime scene and Bowers’s body didn’t excite much interest, seeing as he straight-up murdered three people to escape Juniper Hill, huh?” Richie tried again to tap into his training--improv, acting, being in the closet--but no matter what he did, the thought of Bowers’s ruined skull never failed to end in his gorge rising. He dropped his head between his knees for a moment or two and heard Mike’s gentle “Rich…” as Eddie rubbed a few gentle circles between his shoulder blades.

“I’m good, I’m good, it’s okay.” Forcing himself to say the words were what finally gave him the brute internal force to power through the nausea and sit up again. “Okay, so we have to go back to the library. No biggie. I killed someone there. Pennywise nearly mauled Ben there. Mike, apparently you holed up there like Little Edie for a quarter-century. What could possibly go wrong?”

“I’ll help. I’ll call and get you set up with the night cleaning crew. You can call me, and I’ll walk you right to them.” _Deja vu all over again,_ Richie thought sourly, with Mike nonchalantly mapping a path towards a horrific showdown with a force none of them truly understood once again.

“Thanks, Mike. Really. It means a lot. It helps.” Eddie’s gratitude kept Richie from any further level of resentful sassiness, and he followed Eddie’s lead by also saying thank you.

* * *

Eddie was on the deck of the cottage, looking out at the Kenduskeag. The air was still and heavy. _Like that first night,_ he thought, except he and Richie had been safely inside, looking through the glass patio doors as the bad weather rolled in.

“Bad weather indeed.” The voice to his left was familiar and unwelcome. Much as the last dream where he couldn’t escape the kitchen/funeral parlor/domestic discomfort, Eddie was rooted to his chair, but when he turned his head, he saw the man he knew as Barlow.

Eddie looked back out at the river and sighed in disappointment. “I _knew_ I shouldn’t have touched that thing. Fuck. I was worried it would give me tetanus, but somehow this is worse.”

“Tut tut, don’t fret, my dear fellow. It seems as though whatever partnership or agreement you and Maturin gives you protection in all the important ways. I’m simply visiting. One might call it the drop-in of a nosy neighbor.”

Unsure where to begin, Eddie focused on the easiest point to tackle. “Who the fuck is Maturin?”

Barlow chuckled. “Still as salty as ever, Eddie the Business Partner. Edward Kaspbrak. Eddie the Clown Slayer.”

“I didn’t slay the clown. I put a hole through him. Then he returned the favor. So… there.”

“So modest. Even putting a hole through that ancient creature was an impressive feat. He’d been kicking around and sidling up to the buffet for centuries? Millennia?”

“What the fuck are you doing here besides poking around? You seem like a guy who likes to bargain or deal, so give me your…” Eddie thought fondly of Richie earlier in the day, riffing his way through his _Dawson’s Creek_ reboot, “... _pitch_ , so I can tell you to take a fucking hike.”

“I appreciate a man who gets right to the point,” Barlow said, though his tone suggested he was doing the exact opposite of appreciating it and was, in fact, wishing he could re-open the hole in the middle of Eddie’s chest. “I tried to encourage you earlier to depart. Now I understand my earlier attempts were rude. I apologize. But I still think it would be in your best interest, and Richard’s, if you were to head out of town. You seem tired, Edward. I understand why. Interactions with galactic outsiders can take it out of a man. And now you’re embarking on this tender new romance…”

“Fuck you.”

“Very well. A sensitive subject. Again, my apologies. All I’m trying to say is: wouldn’t you and Richard be more comfortable somewhere away from all this? Away from unpleasant memories? Away from brutes and ignoramuses like Garton? Wouldn’t it be better for you and… well, I’ll leave that part unsaid. You seem to misinterpret my concerns in that direction.”

Eddie rolled an immature threat around in his head, one wondering aloud if Barlow would misinterpret his foot up Barlow’s ass, but he bit his tongue. “We grew up here. _We’re_ the ones that belong here. Why don’t you fuck off down the road?”

“It takes a lot of energy to get a shop up and running, Edward. A lot of energy. Why, you and Richard are learning that yourselves as potential small business owners. But my capital is dear, and it needs to be repaid. Net 15 terms, in your parlance. Not on receipt, but very soon after. Do you understand?”

“What’s that to me? What do I fucking care about your energy?”

There was an edgy smile in Barlow’s voice. “Fair point. I suppose it doesn’t matter. How about we barter? Trade? You give me a departure, I give you something in return.”

“What could you _possibly…_ ”

And Eddie was standing in the bedroom of the cottage watching as he and Richie had sex. Eddie saw himself, confident in a way he had yet to be, even in his most focused moments. And then there was Richie and the _sounds_ he was making…

Eddie turned away. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the Kenduskeag again. He turned to look at Barlow, who somehow looked both deeply happy and very, very mean. Without hesitation, Eddie snapped off a furious “No.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there someday. _Eventually_. I mean, you only need to catch up on 25 years of practice. And meanwhile, Ri… your _paramour_ , he’s had a wealth of experiences. I’m sure it’ll all work out. I’m sure he’s patient.” The sarcasm was venomous, and Eddie could feel it oozing around his self-consciousness.

But two could play at that game. “I’ll be sure to let you know. I’ll drop you an e-mail after you’ve packed up your shit and hopped a plane to who-the-fuck-cares. No dice. No thanks. Now let me dream about divorcing my wife or something mildly less unpleasant than this. At least get me a fucking ice cream sandwich like Richie did when we were sitting out here a month ago. Do you have ice cream sandwiches in your shop of horrors?”

Barlow shook his head sadly and his hands gripping the Adirondack chair bubbled and crackled like grisly Shrinky Dinks until they were reptilian-like claws. “No, Edward, I’m not a confectioner. I suppose I’ll be seeing you. I’d think you’d hold the gift the Turtle gave you as precious, but you seem to be _particularly_ stubborn, so I’ll have no choice but to force you to watch as I drain Richard’s soul straight from his body. I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“And I’m sorry that I can’t kick you in the fucking teeth right…”

Eddie snapped awake. Safe in bed, Richie’s arm heavy around him, his bare skin warm against him. And he knew, as he looked up at the ceiling fan’s blades in the darkness, it was time to stab yet _another_ fucking monster.


	4. All Sales Final

_ My home lies deep within you _

_ And I've got my own place in your soul _

_ Now when I look out through your eyes _

_ I'm young again, even though I'm very old _

—Barry Manilow, “I Write the Songs”

“Let’s kill this fucking clown.”

—Richie Tozier

Richie was used to waking up after Eddie, and he’d even grown used to seeing Eddie in the kitchen performing some portion of his morning routine (though most days Richie was catching the late show, based on his usual sleep habits). But traditionally, Kitchen Eddie was a fully dressed Eddie: sometimes in jeans, sometimes in chinos, sometimes in joggers, but always be-pantsed and always, without  _ fail _ , wearing a shirt.

This Eddie was rinsing grapes in a colander and had a cutting board full of sliced orange and apple; this Eddie was not wearing a shirt and was in boxer briefs.

Richie knew it would be telling that  _ this  _ was what inspired him to more than monosyllabism at 9:30 in the morning, but he couldn’t help himself. “Whoa, when is the  _ Playgirl _ shoot, and am I invited?”

Eddie scowled in reply, which Richie firmly believed was the same as a standard come-hither from anyone else, so he strolled over and ran his palms over Eddie’s shoulders, down his back, reaching a resting place on his narrow hip bones. He pressed so that Eddie was levered backwards into his embrace. “What brought this on? I need to know how to encourage this in the future.”

Heaving a sigh while slapping off the faucet, Eddie replied, “You’re doing it, I guess. You know how all the bullshit with the clown was basically like crazy fucking exposure therapy they show on Dr. Oz to get people over their phobias? You keep giving me shit about keeping my shirt on, so I’m not wearing a shirt because you seem to… like it.”

“What gave that away? Besides the semi I’m rubbing against your back, I mean?”

Eddie scoffed, a mix between a _pfft_ and a _ha_. But he also leaned back firmly and reached behind him to splay his hand against the small of Richie’s back. “You were right: touching the throwing star had consequences.”

Richie had begun to trace a path down Eddie’s abdomen to points of interest below the Kaspbrak Equator and froze. “Shit. What now?”

“Barlow made a house call last night. Guess all his junky merchandise must be connected to his shitbag wifi or something. He’d really like us to reconsider hanging around Derry.”

“I fucking bet.” Releasing Eddie, Richie leaned against the sink, the better to see Eddie’s inscrutable expression. “What did he threaten you with? Does he have Myra’s cell number now?” 

Richie realized, a moment after he wrapped up his mostly rhetorical question, it was the first time he’d said Eddie’s wife’s name.

Eddie was quiet for a moment. “No. No threats. He just...asked. Said some cryptic bullshit about something called Matte-rin, how there’s some kind of truce because I’m…” Eddie’s pause went on long enough that it was clear he was at a loss for words.

“New and improved? Like Robocop?”

“I fucking  _ wish _ I was Robocop right about now.”

Richie punctuated the statement “You’ll always be Robocop to me, sugar bear,” with a tender squeeze of Eddie’s closest biceps. Eddie’s response was somewhat muted. Richie noted with some concern that he looked impassive, almost like he had in Barlow’s shop days ago.

Finally, once the tension was too much for Richie to handle, as he inhaled to release some appropriately manic word salad, Eddie spoke. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

Despite knowing he was the safest he’d been, probably in his entire life, Richie still felt that old compulsion to fold in on himself. “What do you mean? ‘Mean’ what?”

“ _ All _ of it. The nicknames and the ‘Don’t wear your shirt, you look like a  _ Men’s Fitness _ ad I jerked it to at my dentist’s office’ and the humoring me when I want to buy glue traps even though you probably knew they’d send a real exterminator and letting me run the dishwasher twice even though the dishes are definitely sanitized the first time.” 

Eddie kept folding and unfolding himself during the speech like origami made from a Calvin Klein ad, alternately crossing his arms, then clearly realizing that he was doing so and forcing them stiff to his sides. The whole dance made Richie almost embarrassingly fond, like he wanted to barf out a glitter-heavy $7.99 Hallmark card’s worth of platitudes. 

“Wow, that’s what Alex Trebek would call the Potpourri category. Little bit of everything in there.” Eddie huffed, and Richie, feeling a little like his underbelly was about to be exposed in a way it hadn’t when he and Eddie went to the Kissing Bridge, mirrored Eddie’s arm-crossing and slid a step or two away from him. “Yeah, dude, I mean it all. In case I haven’t been crystal clear on this: I love you. You know, like,  _ love _ you. And I know it’s probably weird as fuck to say I love you based on about a month’s worth of time together as grown-ass adults, but it’s how I feel. It’s why I am glad to see you every morning when I wake up and why I’m glad to be with you when you fall asleep a good 3 hours before I do because you’re secretly 80 years old.” 

Switching into a Voice that was mostly Alec Baldwin (he’d never quite been able to crack the code), he put a little mustard on the next bit. “And yes, I’m very very  _ seeeeexually  _ attracted to you. If you need me to be more clear about that, I will research how much it costs to take out a billboard that says ‘Edward Kaspbrak’s entire existence and body makes me very horny.’ Does that help?”

A flushed Eddie, suppressing a smile, said, “I guess.” Then Eddie origami-ed again, arms folding, refolding across his bare chest, “What about…the sex.”

Confused by Eddie’s lack of question mark more than anything, Richie declaratively asked, “What  _ about _ the sex?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m  _ not _ . I’m asking:  _ what about the sex _ , dude?”

“Isn’t it… weird and disappointing to be fucking a 40-year-old who hasn’t…”

At that, Richie bracketed Eddie against the counter, keeping enough distance so he could look him in the eye. “Buddy boy, I’ve been present at every one of the sexual events. Did I  _ seem  _ disappointed?”

Richie gave Eddie enough eyebrow gesturing to finally elicit a “No.”

“Every single thing here in our hometown is weird as  _ shit _ . We’re currently facing yet another weird-as-shit series of events. You stopping a blowjob to ask if what you’re doing is good while you’re full mast? Not weird. And the other night when you…”

Richie moved from distance crowding to full frontal contact crowding, which set Eddie squirming. “Okay, okay, I don’t need the full CNN ticker update.”

“I got some breaking news for you  _ right here _ .”

Eddie sighed. “Rich, you’re so…”

“More like CNN  _ dicker _ .”

Eddie’s body shook with laughter, which Richie found doubly pleasurable, seeing as how Eddie was still 100% in his underwear in the kitchen, fully trapped against his body. “That doesn’t even make sense! You’re so fucking dumb.”

“ _ Fucking _ dumb. I see what you did there. You’re getting the hang of it. Great  _ head _ line.” Grabbing the square bit of Eddie’s chin, he pressed in for a kiss. Moving on from his mouth down the trail of his neck to the valley of his collarbone, Richie continued, “That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Eds. Whatever bullshit poison he poured in your ear? That’s all it is. Especially about this.” Moving his hands lower, thumbing into Eddie’s waistband, peeling and rolling slowly downwards, he concluded, “We’ll get you a few more sexual experience points. Another punch on your card. Then like a couple of dorks, we’ll go to the library and learn what we can about putting an end to this latest fucking nightmare. How’s that sound for a plan?”

Richie took Eddie’s half-groaned expletive to be an affirmative.

* * *

“I love you too, you know.”

Eddie knew, from a quick glance at the digital clock in the dashboard, it had been at least 90 minutes since Richie had said it in the kitchen. It was a little late to be saying it, but he also didn’t want Richie to think it was a post-orgasmic situation where he didn’t have full control of his brain.

Richie’s eyes stayed on the road, but the one hand on the steering wheel convulsed a few times. “Thanks. Cool.”

Eddie curled a hand over Richie’s knee.

* * *

“ _ Ghostbusters _ .”

Eddie was standing at the foot of the stairs a pace or two behind Richie, who surveyed the basement with trepidation.

“Yeah, and also Ben Hanscomb from our real life. Mike, Eddie just said  _ Ghostbusters. _ We’re not going to get slimed or Ben’d, are we?”

On the other end of the phone, Mike said, “I never did see  _ Ghostbusters. _ That was before I was friends with you guys and we went to the movies every other weekend.”

“I feel like this is a stall tactic, dude. Okay, we’re in the basement. What now?”

“Take a few steps past the conference room. There’s a storage closet, B217. The door should be open.”

The door was open. Using the flashlight on his phone, Richie shined a beam into every corner of the storage room before stepping foot inside. Despite every indication this was a benign space, Eddie couldn’t help but think, again and again, of Bowers’s corpse and a young Stan crammed in the same refrigerator from which he’d watched Pennywise unwind himself. His chest tightened; instead of reaching for the inhaler in his hoodie pocket, he placed a steadying hand on Richie’s back. Focused on the task at hand, Richie gave him a quick, reassuring glance and said to Mike, “Okay, we’re here. Looking for a box labeled Pangborn. Do you remember which shelf it’s on?”

Mike directed, Eddie pulled it down, and he and Richie, at a clip just shy of panicked rush, retreated for the first floor and at least a modicum of natural light from the rapidly setting sun. With their heads together, they began to pore over the contents and Pangborn’s neat, authoritative block letters.

“Uh, this seems to be about the author Thad Beaumont. Doesn’t Bill get compared to him a lot? Librarian, what say you?”

There was a beat or two of silence and then Mike evenly replied, “I wouldn’t say that.”

Richie looked at Eddie, eyebrows raised, slapped the cover shut and removed another battered Mead. Eddie was able to quickly smother his laughter in the crook of his elbow.

“Okay, I think I got it. Gaunt, some observations about Polly and a locket?”

“That’s the one,” Mike crackled in response over the speaker.

“Cool. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the assist.”   
  
“Eddie… Richie… be careful.”

“Coming from you, Mikey, that’s about as ironic as shit gets.”

Eddie socked Richie in the arm lightly in reproval. “We will, Mike. Thanks for everything.” As Richie hung up and jammed his phone in his back pocket, Eddie threw the journal back in the banker’s box and shoved the lid back on, which made a dying-mouse-squeal sound that shredded his last nerve. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Aw, you’re kind of ruining the whole Scooby Gang vibe we had going there, pal. Fred would never  _ ever  _ curse.”

Out in the fresh air, heading toward the car, Eddie began to feel a little less anxious. His memory, in retaliation, gave one last courtesy screening of Bowers’s corpse, which was sort of inexpertly edited into Bowers stabbing him in the face. “In what universe am I Fred?”

“You may be right. Mike was probably Fred this time around. You’re too much of a square to be Shaggy...” Eddie huffed but did not deny his squareness. “...and you’re certainly not Daphne. Not to typecast but Bev’s got the red hair. She’s like Daphne if Daphne were also Faith from  _ Buffy. _ ”

“Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He took advantage of Richie’s distraction to snatch the keys from his hand. “Let me drive home so you can spend the whole time working on this bit.”

“You all right? You seemed a little jittery back there.” Eddie could feel Richie watching him as he threw the banker’s box in the backseat and closed the door. He rubbed his forehead for a little bit of relief, both from Richie’s gaze and his concern.

“I’m fine. It’s fine. It just reminded me of all the shit from the last time. Bowers. The clown’s creepy fucking Stan costume. I was so sure that I had a handle on all of it this time around and… it’s like the same old shit.”

Richie folded his arms across the top of the car, then rested his chin on them, and continued to watch Eddie closely. “Yeah, I hate this too. I mean, the stuff with Bowers should probably bother me more than it does. Maybe I’ll end up having some kind of cathartic  _ Good Will Hunting _ moment over that in a year or so. But going into that hardware store the other day… it reminded me that Pennywise wasn’t the only reason I was so afraid for so long.” He paused, then, determinedly, pressed on. “To be gay. Like, I can’t even say it unless I’m putting it in the context of a riff or a bit, and even then it’s only been with my friends. Shit, I didn’t even really  _ say  _ it to Bev.”

Mirroring Richie, Eddie folded his arms and rested them against the top of the car as well. “We could go. You promised me we could.”

Richie gave a short nod, his chin digging into his forearm. “Yeah, we could.”

“But we’re going to stay and fight.” Eddie wanted it to be a question, but it came out of his mouth declaratively.

Nodding again, Richie said, “We are. And after we win, we’ll invite ourselves to Ben and Bev’s little fugitive love nest on the sea and retire from the monster-fighting business forever.”

And for the first time since entering the library, Eddie felt like he could breathe normally again. He leaned back, popped open the car door, and said, “Great. Well, I guess we’d better go home and do our monster-fighting homework then.”

“Zoinks,” was Richie’s reply.

* * *

  
  


Richie had never been so glad to have been a straight-up dork in his early _tees._

“ _M_ _ agic _ ? Pangborn was able to chase this guy off with  _ close-up magic _ ? And  _ shadow puppets _ ? Shit, I shouldn’t have let Maggie give all my books and magic kit to Goodwill when I ran off to Chicago.”

Eddie looked at him skeptically, then pulled the journal from his hands to read for himself. He focused on it like it was a broken formula in an Excel cell. The furrow between his eyes plunged Mariana Trench-deep. “That can’t be right. It has to be more complicated than that. Mike said something about grief and belief…”

“Cool poetry, Edward. Sure, that’s in there too if you’re looking for it. Pretty sure if I think about how I felt, oh, about 45 days ago, I can dig up what grief feels like. Pun sorta intended.”

The truth of the matter was: Richie was feeling another surge of confidence after reading Pangborn’s words. Belief he was more powerful than some two-bit demonic small business owner? He only had to think of Pennywise melting back into cosmic ash in the cavern and know that could be true in the right circumstances. Grief? He might have been a little pithy in what he’d said to Eddie, but it was not without truth. If he stopped long enough to think about the moment he’d touched Eddie’s face, seen his vacant eyes, and known he was dead, he could easily conjure the vast chasm of denial and anger it had torn into the center of him. He worried that if he thought too long about it, it was a slippery slope to how inconceivable Eddie’s resurrection was and how fragile it could be. In order for this stupid and foolhardy endeavor to be successful, Richie assumed he had to not only be brave but  _ sure. _

And if it involved close-up magic, Richie  _ could  _ be sure. He bounced up from his place on the couch and snatched the notebook out of Eddie’s hands, resulting in an annoyed “Hey!”

“Get ready to be amazed and astonished. Nothin’ up my sleeves.” Richie proved this by lifting both cuffs of his hoodie, then shoving them up to his elbows. “If my lovely assistant would do me the honor of checking my kangaroo pocket to confirm it is also empty.”

Narrowing his eyes, Eddie stood and stepped close to Richie and slid his hands into Richie’s hoodie front pocket and moved his palms against Richie’s stomach and sides. In response, Richie slid his hands around to Eddie’s ass and gave it a firm squeeze as he sang  _ “Abra-abra-cadabra/I wanna reach out and grab ya. _ ”

Eddie rolled his eyes, stepped back, and said, “Literal interpretations of lyrics are lame. Steve Miller Band is also lame.”

“We’ll argue about that another time, Eddie my love. May I have a coin? Any coin will do, a quarter is preferred.”

“I don’t carry loose change. That’s gross. Viruses can live on a porous surface for…”

“A-bup-bup, okay, I can grab my own coin. I don’t need a CDC briefing on the flu.” Richie pulled a quarter from a scattering of coins he’d tossed on the kitchen island. “I hold in my hand a genu-wine American quarter.” Richie held it up above his head, then wrapped his fingers around it in a fist. Then he pointed a finger gun at the fist, pulled his thumb down with a wink and a “Bang,” and opened his fist to reveal air.

Eddie slow-clapped three times, then turned his palms up and shrugged in the universal sign of “So what?”

Richie smiled. “Check  _ your  _ kangaroo pocket, sweet thing.”

Eddie, his impassive expression melting into a sort of confused surprise, withdrew a quarter from his front pocket.

“Ta da! And now you have meningitis.”

“Ha ha ha. So your plan is to lure Barlow close enough to grab his ass? I don’t think that’ll work on him. I don’t know, Rich. This whole thing makes me nervous as fuck now.”

Bracketing Eddie’s face in his hands, Richie kissed him, brief but firm, then said, “You’ve gotta have faith, my dear boy. If I misdirect his attention, can I count on you to get that traveler’s case Pangborn talked about? The one that held souls or whatever?”

Richie watched as Eddie tamped down his worry and, with as much conviction as he seemed capable of in the moment, nodded.

Grief and belief and righteous anger, Richie thought to himself as he kissed Eddie again. That and close-up magic? He could do that.

* * *

  
  


_ Eddie did not recognize this house. _

_ In its floor plan, it shared some similarities to his home with Myra in Queens Village. But the interior decorating was certainly warmer, ran to sunnier touches and earth tones. When Eddie stood still, trying to orient himself in the space, he could almost feel the love within the walls. _

_ He reached a staircase. On the first floor, not far from the landing, a person was seated at a table working on a puzzle. _

_ Without turning to face him, the man said, “Hey, Eddie.” _

_ And even though he knew it was a dream and that he should be able to do anything he wanted, including absorb the shock, Eddie put a hand against the wall to steady himself. A hard, swift surge of unshed tears stopped him from returning the greeting. _

_ Stan seemed to understand that, though he continued to sit, composed and still, just as he had been as a kid. He stopped sorting pieces and turned in his chair. “It’s going to be all right. I promise. Sit down on the steps if you need to. I’ll come to you.” _

_ It was tempting to give in, let his chest lock up and his knees give out, but Eddie dug deep and, knowing exactly what would reassure and exasperate Stan, he snipped, “Don’t treat me like a fucking baby. I’m a grown up. I can do this.” _

_ “I never said you couldn’t. Just giving you options.” Stan watched him patiently. “So are you going to come down here or what?” _

_ “Shut up.” Eddie kept his hand against the wall and made his way down the stairs. Once seated, he folded his hands and set them on the table and stared at them before looking up into Stan’s face. “Hi, Stan.” _

_ He was granted a flicker of a smile. “Hi, Eddie.” _

_ “Am I… ?” Eddie knew the two options were “dead” or “dreaming,” and wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to either of those questions, so he opted instead to ask “Where are we?” _

_ “I’m not sure we have the time for me to explain that. You’re sleeping, but you’re not dreaming. You’re not dead, but… you’ll never really be  _ alive _ again the way most people are. Like Richie.” Stan gave a weighted and significant pause. “For example.” _

_ It felt stupid as fuck to do so, but Eddie hid his face in his hands. It seemed unfair that Stan was able to truck in even mild innuendo from beyond the grave. _

_ “Anyway,” Stan continued, “we’re here, you’re safe, and I’m going to help you as much as I can, since you two idiots are determined to see this through. I know it’s not the most welcome advice coming from me, but if I were you, I’d stick to the plan to get out of Derry after this is over.” _

_ “Yeah. I know. I hear you.” _

_ “Great. Common sense prevails for once. But in the meantime, you need to prepare for what to do. Richie’s got one part of it down. I mean, you have to give credit where credit’s due: there’s a lot to be said for his kind of bullheaded bravery. And he… understands the significance of what happened with you. In both ways. Your death and the way you came back. But that isn’t everything. Sometimes to kill one of these kinds of ancient evils, you need an old-fashioned weapon with a sort of charm or blessing on it. In Jewish folklore, to kill a golem, you’d wipe out a the letter on its forehead to return it to its original form of earth. In this case, what you’re facing is made from something darker, less...tangible. It is an unearthly paradox, both emptiness and energy.” _

_ “At the risk of being rude, Stan, I don’t want to attend Temple with you, so can we cut to the chase?” _

_ Stan’s mouth made a thin line. “Just because you say ‘At the risk of being rude’ doesn’t make your impatience  _ not _ rude.” _

_ Eddie folded his arms and tried not to smile. _

_ “The being who oversaw this particular chapter in our cosmic lives in this plane…” Stan pointedly glared when Eddie heaved a sigh, “...was given something to work with when Richie left town. He built something that can act as a weapon. But you have to wield it for it to work.” _

_ “Like Excalibur.” _

_ “Sure. You’re interested in the mythology now that you can picture a  _ sword. _ ” _

_ It hit Eddie in an instant, everything he’d been holding onto. He looked into Stan’s grown-up face, his eyes obscured by the lenses of his glasses _

(and something else, something endless)

_ and, half choked by tears, said, “I wish you’d been there, Stan.” _

_ “I was. Not in the one-set-of-footprints way you learned about in Sunday school. But I was. I’m sorry it was awful and that it hurt, Eddie. But I also couldn’t have helped that, even if I had been there.” Stan reached across the table and placed a hand on Eddie’s wrist. It sent a warm wave through him, soothing and gentle. “And I’m here now. If you’d stop being a pain in the ass.” _

_ Eddie chuckled wetly and wiped at his face. “ _ Fine, _ I’m listening.” _

_ Carefully, Stan guided Eddie’s hand down to the puzzle and extended his pointer finger. Eddie looked. _

_ Despite his promise to be more cooperative, Eddie balked. “That? What am I supposed to do? Go down there and cut the board out? Who do I look like: Paul Bunyan?” _

_ Stan smiled again, small and brief, then said, “This is going to come as a surprise, but… you’ve already done it.” _

And Eddie awoke

_ (arrived) _

to find the board bearing his and Richie’s initials in one hand, a bandsaw in the other, illuminated by the headlights of their rental car, engine idling in the otherwise quiet night.

* * *

Richie awoke alone in bed as usual. After a few minutes of internal debate, he arose, pulled himself together, then made his way to the kitchen.

Eddie was dressed this time, sitting at the kitchen island. Richie rubbed at his eyes under his glasses and groused, “You know we’re never going to check lazy morning sex off our list if you keep…”

The rest of Richie’s sentence was lost to the shock of seeing what was resting underneath Eddie’s hands.

“Stan says hey.”

* * *

  
  


_ The street was quiet at dusk. It was well after closing, and business had continued at a good clip. The dominoes were starting to fall, though, and soon it would be time to close up and head out. _

_ He locked the front door of Peculiar Treasures, traveler’s case firmly in hand. Once the jingling of keys stopped, he recognized a new sound on the wind: a black-capped chickadee was calling; mingled with that was human whistling, off-key but imbued with cheer. _

* * *

“I never much cared for Barry Manilow,” the creature they knew as Barlow said. “I was always a Beatles man myself. Not their dirty hippie era, of course, but before that.”

Richie shrugged, hands in his pockets. “Y’know, I would’ve agreed with you a few weeks ago, but I’ve developed a recent fondness for him.”

Barlow’s human facade rippled a little, his eyes flashing with a reptilian sheen. “I thought perhaps we could stay out of one another’s way.”

“Yeah, that would’ve been great, wouldn’t it?” Eddie spoke up from the other side of Barlow. “It’s not like I’m fucking  _ enthused _ about this town. But Richie and I put a lot of work into cleaning up the last mess. I got buried not too far from here, as a matter of fact. Also, you keep skulking into our subconscious, which is a pretty fucked up thing to do if you just want to be left alone.”

Richie nodded agreement. “Have to say, man… not a fan of that, especially after remembering a big chunk of my formative years.”

“I don’t suppose I could interest the two of you in…”

Richie said “Nope” just as Eddie said “Fuck no.”

Barlow turned to Eddie, his voice silken. “Edward, I wasn’t joking. I don’t think you’ll find the process pleasant.”

“I get the feeling this is a little different than last time. Sounds like a few years ago you had chaos on your side. Seems like we have a nice calm Thursday evening here.” 

Richie removed his hands from his pockets while Barlow continued to stare coldly at Eddie. “Mr. Barlow, I don’t suppose you could spare me a dollar?”

“What?”

As Barlow turned towards him, Richie held up his hands, palms forward in a “Don’t shoot” posture, keeping himself a good 10 feet away. “Could you spare a dollar? Oh, never mind, I have… well, it’s not a dollar. It’s an old token.” Holding it up in the dying light, it glinted. Richie looked at it, letting himself journey back through the terrible, sad, anxious journey from Pennywise’s taunting all the way to Garton’s drunken, all-too-human hate. Then he thought of how his hands felt sliding off Eddie’s body as Ben and Mike pulled him away, how he couldn’t get enough air in to howl out his agony.

As a sort of understanding began to dawn on Barlow’s face, Richie quickly made a fist, pointed a finger gun at it, and cooly whispered, “ _Bang_ , motherfucker.”

Barlow stepped forward to reach for Richie with rapidly elongating elongated fingers that were curling like claws; Richie’s now-empty hand radiated a silver-hued beam of light that seared like a lightning bolt straight toward Barlow, crackling over him and revealing the burnt husk of his true form.

And while Barlow continued forward to wrap himself  _ (itself _ ) around Richie, Eddie yanked the case out of Barlow’s hand, then plunged a carefully whittled stake into his back, right through the center of him. Eddie shouted “Go home, asshole,” close to Barlow’s rapidly dissolving head, then stepped back and snapped open the case while a shrieking Barlow gave his best Wicked Witch impression and began oozing into a pile of viscous, foul-smelling sludge.

There was a shuddering sensation in the earth as a kind of steam rose out of the case. A wind that seemed to contain both hot and cold rushed around them with great force. Throughout the town, varying plans of violence dissipated.

Just down the block, a rusty throwing star dissolved into metallic ash.

Richie staggered back to give the Barlow pile a chance to spread out. “I guess killing monsters is always going to be disgusting, huh?”

Eddie, smearing foul streaks of goo all over the traveler’s case, while making a face that suggested he might cut his hands off next, replied, “Technically this is my first one so I’ll take your word for it. I’d prefer there not be a next time.”

“Yeah, I’m good for the next 27 years. And I imagine you won’t be surprised, but I’ve  _ also _ lost my taste for hanging around Derry.”

“Good.” Eddie punctuated his statement by kicking the now-rotting case toward a nearby sewer drain.

The storefront once known as Peculiar Treasures, much like Center Street Drug, was now a crater. And as the sun sank below the horizon, Richie and Eddie walked together back to their car. The chickadee that had whistled Barlow’s exit from the shop called out once more, then was silent.

* * *

**Coda**

Bev’s dreams had mostly ceased being horror-shows, though occasionally Tom would make an appearance. She could never tell if it was more or less reassuring to know that Tom’s only power was the regular, everyday power of an abuser and that when he entered her dreams, it was because of memory and hurt, not because he had any other bridge to her.

But her latest dream had shreds of the bad old days when the clown was hibernating with the new, improved sheen of her connection to Richie. In it, a little bird with a cap and bright black eyes perched outside her window. It tilted its head silently, then flew away. Out the window, Bev could see a scorched ruin of an awning flapping limply in the breeze and what seemed to be an arcade cabinet tipped over in the street, though it seemed to be made of charcoal instead of plexiglass. If she squinted she could see two figures, one tall, one… not as tall, making their way down the road, away from the scene.

She could see another blackened briquet propped against the sewer drain. In the dark beyond, all seemed quiet, but Bev could sense the potential. Always, always the potential for something new to start.

She awakened gently, aware of Ben stirring next to her. She placed a hand in the center of his back to feel him breathe.

On his nightstand, his phone buzzed to life, clattering and bouncing in vibrate mode. Ben picked it up, made a sweet grumbly noise, then answered, “Hey, Richie. You okay?”

Bev smiled. Ben answered every Loser call the same way.

She felt the bed shift as Ben rolled over. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and muttered, “It’s Richie. He says he wants to talk to you, but not about my wang.”

“How thoughtful of him,” she murmured, goosing him firmly, then letting her hand trail against his aforementioned unmentionable, warm and secure in his underwear. She held the phone against her free ear and said, “I touched Ben’s butt. How is your morning going?”

“Not bad. I hope to touch Ben’s butt as well in the near future. I don’t suppose you could tell me which of the beautiful oceanview condominiums on this marina belong to the two of you so Eddie and I can join you grotesques for breakfast.”

Bev gasped and threw the duvet off, then spanked Ben firmly, earning her about as disgruntled a “Hey” as always-even-tempered Ben could manage. “Richie and Eddie are here!” She threw on one of Ben’s button-downs draped across his hamper, stuck her feet in a pair of slides, grabbed her keys, and raced through the door, then lobby, to find two travel-weary Losers waiting for her. 

Drawing both men into one tight embrace, Bev squeezed tight. “Guess it was easier this time around, huh?”

“I mean, it wasn’t  _ fun _ ,” Eddie groused over her shoulder.

Bev squeezed once more for good measure, then released them. Richie messed with Bev’s already skewed bright-and-early hairdo and she retaliated by punching him in the shoulder hard enough to draw an affronted “Ow!” While rubbing the tender spot, he said, “Eddie’s developed a taste for stabbing things so I’d watch out if I were you.”

“I bet he has,” she retorted with enough innuendo to make a flush creep across Eddie’s face.

“Gasp! Beverly Jessica Annette Marsh! Are you  _ finally _ ready to dish on our men?”

“Not without coffee, I’m not. Come on. I bet Ben’s already making plans for breakfast. Maybe instead of embarrassing Eddie further, you two can tell me all about the dream I had.”


End file.
